


What Your Eyes Cannot Yet See and Other Drabbles

by aadarshinah



Series: Tales From The Ancient!John 'verse [2]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vegas, Ancient John Sheppard, Background Relationships, Backstory, Conspiracy, Documentaries, Drabble Collection, Episode: s03e08 McKay and Mrs. Miller, Episode: s05e12 Wormhole X-Treme, Episode: s05e19 Vegas, F/M, M/M, Magazine articles, Origins, Past Relationship(s), Pseudo-History, Science Fiction, Sentient Atlantis, Television, Television Watching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 57
Words: 38,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various Drabbles in the Ancient!John 'verse, posted in the order they are written</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What Your Eyes Cannot Yet See

**Author's Note:**

> And we have a new AJ 'Verse drabble collection, starting with an Vegas!Ancient!John meets Vegas!Rodney - set during the events of "Vegas". Because, yes, I intended for Vegas!Rodney to be the alternate McKay who came through the bridge in "Alii", not Rod. In case that wasn't clear.  
> \- - -  
> “I? I am but a mirror, whose only purpose is to show you what your eyes cannot yet see.”
> 
> Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

"You... You know everything," Iohannes manages at great length, finding it hard to string even those three words together. His translation matrix must be acting up again: his nanoids have been wearing out more quickly of late and Terran technology still has yet to reach a point that would allow him to repair them.

"It was a hard choice," Doctor McKay sympathises. Iohannes hates him for it. He doesn't want anything from this man, this man who's been to Atlantis without him. This man who claims to be 'custodia' and have knowledge of his city that no Terran could possibly have. "Certainly you didn't intend things to go as badly as they did. Things just don't always go the way we plan."

His nails dig into his palms. "You don't... You can't..." Who is this man to talk to him about the Wraith War? The Siege? About the Exodus and the ten thousand terrible years he spent in 'cathedra' before the 'potentiae' finally failed and 'Lantis used her last breath to send him across the universe to Terra to track down the others who never returned, only to find a world so primitive that there was no hope of finding help for the 'urbs-navis', let alone ever returning home.

Iohannes has spent two hundred and fifty-seven years on Terra. He's wandered all of it's lands and sailed each of it's seas. He's found nothing but the most basic of technology and the basest of people. He has seen war (so many wars) and sickness and death, but for some reason he does not age and, though he's come close to it more times than he can recount, he cannot die. His only hope has been to return to Atlantis before the end finally comes, and now here is this man, telling him that he's been to Pegasus - that he's been living on Atlantis for 'years' - and that all his suffering has been for naught.

He wishes they'd not taken his Colt.

He starts looking for a door.

"Detective."

Despite himself, Iohannes pauses his search and turns back towards Doctor McKay. "What?"

"I know you'll probably think this sounds ridiculous, even for one with your rather... unique background, but a little while ago my team encountered a rift in space/time. On the other side was an alternate version of reality. It was very similar to ours in many ways. I met a team much like the one I work with, only 'you' were the leader. You were a hero, had saved the world several times over."

"Doesn't sound much like me," he says with a bitter smile. 'Lantis is dead because of him, whatever this man says. Because of him, Tirianus is in pieces beneath the ocean and 'Tethys' is nothing more than debris floating in the Palamede - and that's not counting the Terran battles, the Terran wars.

"I don't think there's much difference between you and that other John Sheppard I met. It's amazing how one incident can entirely alter the course of your life. Of so many lives."

"And just what 'incident' might that be?"

"As near as I can tell? The ZedPMs. In this universe, they ran out of juice before we found Atlantis, but in at least one other they lasted long enough for us to find you in stasis."

He sucks in a sharp breath. So maybe this man does know everything. It doesn't change anything. "What do you want from me?"

"Besides an answer for what a ten thousand year old Ancient is doing working in the Las Vegas Police Department?"

"Right now? Trying to figure out how a Wraith wound up in the middle of the Mojave Desert."

"A hive ship attacked Earth three months ago. We were able to defeat it with a weapon we found beneath a mile of ice in the Antarctic-"

Entirely against his will, Iohannes' eyebrows shoot up. "You found the 'cathedra'?" He remembers the state he'd found the outpost in when the 'porta' had deposited him there. Buried beneath so much ice and snow, it had taken him three days to climb his way to the surface after he'd finally determined the outpost to be as dead as Atlantis had become. To the best of his knowledge, the Terrans haven't been doing the kind of research that might uncover it. But, then again, to the best of his knowledge, he'd thought the Terrans were still woefully uninformed about wormhole travel between galaxies, so he supposes it might be possible.

"If you mean the Control Chair, then yes. A few of us have the right genetic code to make it work."

Iohannes' hands, which had loosened, clench again. It's utterly stupid, but the idea of someone else - one of these Terrans, who can't even possibly begin to appreciate just how amazing the technology really is - sitting in one of his 'cathedrae' makes him jealous beyond all belief. He doesn't care if they saved Terra, which he actually likes now that the inhabitants have figured out indoor plumbing and broadcast television, he is 'pastor'. He belongs in 'cathedra', not some Terran who can't possibly have a clue what he's doing. As is obvious by the way at least one dart must have escaped.

"So, what? You came looking for the Wraith you let get away, found me in the process, and decided to have this little chat with me out of the goodness of your heart?"

Doctor McKay taps the edge of his file folder against the desk. "Not exactly..." For the first time since since walking into the room, the other man looks uncertain, nervous even. "I know everything about you - everything that you did in Atlantis, everything that's happened since you were commissioned in the United States Air Force in '92:

"I know what happened at Tirianus and the Palamede. I know that you gave up everything to stay behind and protect Atlantis for as long as you possibly could. I know that the only thing you own is a car. You have two thousand, three hundred and sixty-three dollars in the bank and are thirteen thousand dollars in debt, not counting off-the-books gambling losses to a guy named Mikey. I know that you passed your detective's exam with the highest scores the LVPD has ever seen, but have been scraping by with progressively poorer and poorer performance reviews ever since.

"But, most importantly, I know you have the same strength of character as that other John Sheppard I met. You belong on Atlantis and, if you're willing, I can bring you back there. If you help us."

Iohannes turns back towards the door. As much as he wants - needs - to go home, he doesn't think he can bear going back to a dead city. He lost the right to call Atlantis home long ago, when he abandoned her like all the rest. It doesn't matter that she was dying, that she was dead. He should have died with her there instead of attempting to find help on Terra. The only thing he has to look forward to if he returns is the final straw that will likely push him to seeing if he can't end this farcical existence once and for all.

"Licinus. Wait."

His hand slips off the door handle. He's not heard that name in years.

McKay walks around the table and tucks a business card into Iohannes' jacket pocket. "Please. Think about it. You know where to find us."


	2. To Live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.” 
> 
> Margaret Bonnano  
> \- - -  
> You know how sometimes you just see a picture and a whole story just hits you, viscerally, right in the gut? Like it's there and you just can't not tell it? Well that's the case with [this:](http://www.flickr.com/photos/littlemisselisabeth/4625781482/)

Because this is Nicolaa at age 14, when Iohannes has just come home from 'Tethys' after the Battle of the Palamede. It's been three years since she's seen him, this man who practically raised her, who taught her everything she knows, who was (is) her only friend. And she's so happy to see him home, alive, she kissed him right in the middle of the Gate Room, in front of everyone.

 

They're alone now, in one of their secret hideaways (because it was always easier to hide away than deal with the adults, who only ever treated her as a child and him as an Abomination), and she's just closed the door behind them. She's terrified that he's going to tell her that they can't do this, that he doesn't want to do this, that he doesn't feel the same. He's been her whole world - her entire life - and all she wants is to be his.

The butterflies are brewing a small storm in her stomach.

In a moment, Iohannes will cross the room, put his hands on either side of her face, and kiss her with all the feeling he has for her. His hands will stay on her face for a long instant before sliding to her shoulders. They will push the flimsy straps of her dress down and, after she frees her arms, Nicolaa will wrap them tightly around him and never want to let go. His hands will slide down to her waist, her hips, the backs of her thighs. He will whisper how much he loves her into her hair after she's asleep, but she won't hear. She'll never hear those words from him until much later, until it's almost too late.

Five years from now, this will be the scene of their final breakup. Glass will be shattered and plates smashed. She'll be wearing another ingénue dress and there will be cuts and scratches all up and down her arms and tears pouring down her face.

Fourteen years from now, there will be more cuts and scratches on her arms, more blood - too much blood - and she will be dead in his arms.

But now she is fourteen and young and in love and there are butterflies brewing up a storm in her stomach, and she is about to be the happiest she will ever be in her all too short life.


	3. How Ridiculous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note. This story is intended to serve as a semi-coherant backstory for Lorne. It once stood on it's own, but I'm making a drabble here because it works better. Was written c. 9/12 and posted as it's own story, but is being moved here because. 
> 
> Set between "Heres" and "Atlas," mostly.  
> \- - -  
> "How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised by anything that happens in life!"
> 
> Marcus Aurelius' Mediations

Evan has only ever hated one person in his entire life and that man is Robert James Hadley, who he's never even met.

He hates Robert Hadley because he's his mother's husband, the one she was too afraid of to divorce even after she ran away, ran all the way to San Francisco, for fear he'd track her down and take her children away. Robert Hadley had done terrible things to her, but she'd put up with all of it because that's what she'd been taught her lot in life was: to put up with the whims of men. But there's only so much a woman can put up with, especially when she has two children and starts to see those whims turned on them.

So she'd run away. She'd run all the way to San Francisco, first to a cramped apartment in a decrepit brick building that had never quite been the same after the Great Earthquake but somehow managed to avoid being torn down year after year, then to an older but far better maintained converted firehouse in Glen Park. And a few years later she met the man who would be Evan's father, and though they never married, they were happy together, which is all that really mattered.

Not that Mom ever told him of any of this. As far as Evan knew growing up, Bryan and Robin were his full-blooded brother and sister, and the fact that they and Mom had a different last name from him and Dad was just a curiosity and nothing more. It wasn't until he'd almost been a senior in college that he'd learned the truth - the full, unvarnished truth as far as Bryan remembers it, though he'd only been four at the time - and only then because Mom had received a letter in the mail telling her that her husband was dead.

So the only person Evan's ever hated is a dead man, whom he never met and never will.

This remains true even after he joins the SGC, because while there are a lot of bad people in the universe, not all of them people in the strictest sense, none of the things those guys have done come close to the things that Robert Hadley did trying to break the spirit of a woman who's only sin was having ever loved him.

Granted, on universal scale of evilness, beating up one woman every now and again probably doesn't compare much to enslaving entire planets, or the senseless torture of anyone who might dare dissent, or murder on a scale for which humanity doesn't quite have the words for, but still. The goa'uld never pretended to be kind and loving false gods. Robert Hadley did nothing but.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His dad, Eric, is a cop. Not a particularly good one it must be said, if one measures goodness by advancements and commendations, but he was honest and thoughtful and kind, and did twenty without incident. And before that he'd put in four years with the Navy - not that he'd been particularly good at that either, never rising above the rank of seaman - and gotten out before things started getting hairy in Vietnam.

His mom, June, is a bit of a bohemian, despite everything that happened with her husband. She was always bright and vivacious and taught art classes at the community center three times a week in exchange for locally-grown vegetables or homemade jam or herbal teas. She always had some cause she was championing, and more often than not her art was donated to some fundraiser rather than sold to put money in the jam-jar she kept in full sight on the kitchen counter.

On the face of it, they should've been a bad match, but that's only if one stopped at the face of things. Dad is calm and solid and steady and in all his life Evan has never seen him get truly angry at anything, and Mom is not nearly as flighty as she seems. They're perfect for each other in a way that Evan's never actually questioned. It doesn't matter that they've never married. They're his parents and they love each other. Nothing else really matters.

He wonders sometimes what his parents would say if they knew what he really did. They still think he's part of the 4 SOS, stationed in Afghanistan and getting shot at on a more less regular basis. Not that it's any less dangerous on Atlantis, but he doesn't like lying to them about something so important.

Mostly, though, Evan just wishes he could show Mom some of the paintings he's done of Atlantis, but even those are classified.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Atlantis is a city that begs to be painted. Forget physicists and anthropologists, the moment the Stargate Program goes public the SGC would be fighting off requests from artists who want to come to Atlantis to draw her.

Evan has yet to come across the right shade of blue for Lantea's sky on a clear afternoon. He's tried Manganese and Cerulean and Ultramarine, Cobalt and Windsor and Indanthrene. He's found pigments for every other time of day, every other light, but he's starting to think that one might not exist for the Lantean summer, when the sun is high and the weather fair, and ocean for miles and miles.

He's not found the right color for the ocean yet either, but he's in no hurry. He'll figure it out on day.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His sister, Robin, is nearly six years older than him; Bryan's almost seven. He was close to both when he was younger - or, at least, as close as anyone can be with that kind of age difference. Things have been particularly strained between him and Bryan ever since Bryan went off to college on the east coast and decided that traveling cross-country for holidays was too much trouble. He's some sort of estate lawyer for some firm out of DC how, and Evan's not spoken to him in nearly five years.

He's still close with Robin, though. She's stayed in San Francisco, running an apothecary in Chinatown with her husband, so he'd been able to visit a lot when he'd been attached to the teaching cadre out of Berkley. His deployments, first to Afghanistan, then to the SGC and Atlantis, have kept him from visiting as much lately, but her kids at least know who he is, which is more than he can say about Bryan's.

Sometimes he wonders if he shouldn't have just stuck it out with Becca, and ignored the whole she's pregnant but it's not my kid thing. He probably would've too, if she'd just been honest about it.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evan didn't have to join the Air Force, didn't have to take the AFROTC scholarship to pay for college. Well, he did if he wanted to go to a place like Seattle University, which was both private and out-of-state, but there were other colleges.

He chose Seattle because it was close enough to drive too but far enough away to make visiting home a vacations-only sort of deal.

He chose the Air Force because he wanted to do something with his life, and Evan'd the vague idea of being able to do more in the military than as a cop like Dad.

He ended up majoring in philosophy trying to figure out what the something might be. (Evan's still not figured out that one yet, but he's hoping that one might might come with time too.)

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Earth, he's usually a pilot attached to special operations squadrons like the 4 SOS, mostly flying AC-130s. Over the years, he's picked up enough cross-training to be a combat controller as well, which is what he actually did the most of in Afghanistan.

On Atlantis, he serves as executive officer to a ten-thousand-year-old Ancient who can speak to the city and is probably his five-hundredth great-uncle, give or take a few generations. He spends more hours doing paperwork than should legally be possible and flys puddle jumpers that can cloak and go one-fourth the speed of light. He's just a little bit in love with his civilian counterpart, a very male Czech astrophysicist, and quasi-married to a sentient Ancient warship.

Evan's life used to make sense, in a way it never does anymore, but he wouldn't trade it for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assorted Background Info
> 
> Born: 22.7.1970, San Fransisco, California  
> Attended:  
> •Seattle University [1988 - 1992, Philosophy, AFROTC]  
> •University of Caifornia, Berkeley [1998 - 2001, ABD, Philosophy]  
> Mother: June Childress [1941 - ]  
> Father: Eric Lorne [1940 - ]  
> Step-Father: Robert James Hadley [1936 - 1992]  
> Half-Siblings:  
> •Bryan Hadley [4.5.1963 - ], divorced, two children:  
> \--Matthew Hadley [1989 - ]  
> \--Jessica Hadley [1992 - ]
> 
> •Robin Hadley [23.9.1964 - ], married to Joseph Liu [1971 - ], two children:  
> \--Tyler Liu [2001 - ]  
> \--Riley Liu [2003 - ]
> 
> Spouse: none  
> Children: none  
> Posts:  
> •Recuiting Flight Commander & Assistant Professor of Aerospace Studies; Detachment 085, University of California, Berkeley [1998 - 10.2001]  
> •Flight Commander, 4th Special Operations Squadron; deployed to Afghanistan [10.2001 - 2.2003]  
> •Executive Officer, SG-11; Stargate Command [2.2003 - 7.2005]  
> •Assistant Military Commander, Atlantis Expedition & Commander of AR-2 [7.2005 - ]  
> Cover Story: Assistant Director of Operations, 4th Special Operations Squadron in Afghanistan [2.2003 - ]


	4. Whole Cloth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death."
> 
> Albert Camus The Fall  
> \- - -  
> The next installment, "Exsul," is proving difficult. Enjoy this until then. Takes place post-"Iudex"

The thing about dating an alien, Rodney quickly discovers, is not to judge anything his significant other does by human standards. Their races may share ninety-seven percent of a genome, but that three percent makes a lot of difference at times. And that's just nature - nurture has led to a whole set of cultural issues that Rodney doesn't think he could ever unravel in their entirety, even if he had the anthropological inkling.

But that's okay. John, for all he's not human, does a frightfully good job of pretending to be one. What's more, whatever his reasons, he seems to prefer it that way. The only time his true species is ever really an issue is when he starts talking about sex at the breakfast table or asks how much more he has to 'dumb down' one of his math proofs to have it make sense to Earth mathematicians. Which, it must be admitted, is only really embarrassing. And condescending. And annoying. But, having met other Ancients while hooked into 'Aurora's' neural network and while ferrying the survivors of the Tria back on to Atlantis on the Daedalus, he can say it's these are the least of far worse sins the Ancients seem to suffer.

But dating a god... That, it takes Rodney a frightfully long time to realise, is a whole other ball of wax, although not for the reasons one might think. It's not his 'divine' powers that are hard to adapt to or the religion that's sprung up around him - no, those are annoying and amusing by turns, and John manages to take both less seriously than he does.

No, the thing that it's hard to come to terms with is John's singular, overwhelming 'boredom'. It had been bad enough before, when John had needed to sleep and eat and breathe like the rest of them. But now there are twenty-eight hours in the day that must be filled and, even on Atlantis, work can only take up so much.

Rodney hates to quote philosophers and theologians, but, "The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings."

After his Ascension, John dives deeper into his informal study of Earth and the Tau'ri, to the point where drowning becomes more than a figurative possibility. He goes through books at a voracious rate, sometimes finishing eight or ten a night (and not small flimsy paperbacks either, or, at least, not just; Rodney's talking about all the classics of human literature, from Homer to Hugo, Dumas to Dostoevsky, Virgil to Verne to van Goethe, with one weekend dedicated to the entirety to the Harry Potter series to date and a whole week apportioned to the various Harlequin novels that people had somehow seen fit to bring to the Pegasus galaxy). Same goes for movies and television shows, showing the discrimination in what he chooses to watch as what he chooses to read (which is to say, none at all).

It's not just Tau'ri entertainment John's uses to stave off boredom. He still goes running with Ronon, for all the good it does him, lacking a physical body as he does. He still goes to the mainland with Teyla on a frightfully regular basis and allows himself to be put to work however her people require (or, at least, did until they resettled on New Athos). Add to that his new willingness to do paperwork – any kind of paperwork – to pass the time as well as his offer to teach Major Lorne about Ancient philosophy and, well, needless to say it's obvious John's grasping at straws to keep occupied.

Rodney tries. He really does. But John has absolutely no interest in learning about science and there are so many times he can ask him to help out with jumper maintenance or breaking into Janus' notes before John catches on. Because, contrary to everything that he pretends, John is a smart, wryly bastard who might actually have been manipulating them towards his domination of the entire galaxy all this time, as Radek once claimed. (Not that Rodney thinks this was actually the case, that it just happened as much as these things can ever just happen, but the possibility remains.)

So he takes to collecting books (decent books: Asimov and Heinlein, Cherryh and Reynolds, as well as any kind of non-fiction that he thinks John might be bothered to read), movies and tv series (he goes through the laughingly named electronics section at two o'clock one morning and picks up one of everything they don't already have). He fills three hard drives with semi-legal downloads of everything he can find (in alphabetical order, because he figures John's going to watch it all anyway).

It's not until he boxes it all up, clearly labelled and ready for the next Daedalus run, that Rodney remembers there aren't going to be any more Daedalus runs. Ever. He's stuck on Earth, just like the boxes, and John will never get them because he's stuck three million light-years away with people who despise his entire existence.

John must be bored out of his mind.


	5. Better Than Your Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
> 
> Dr. Seuss  
> \- - -  
> post-"Iudex"

He's half asleep when John climbs into bed, scooting up close behind him before throwing an arm across his stomach and pulling him closer.

Rodney makes an incoherent noise.

"Sorry," John mutters into his shoulder, tangling their legs together. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"Please tell me you didn't just come back from running with Ronon again."

"It's more fun now that I can actually beat him."

"Aren't you supposed to be using your powers for good and not evil?

"I 'am'," his 'amator' protests, poking his boney chin into the space his lips had just occupied. "I'm keeping his head from getting too big."

Rodney gives a sleepy snort. "Yes, because that's 'such' a problem with Ronon."

"Have you seen his hair?"

He laughs. Then, with much wriggling, manages to turn around in John's arms. "What time is it?" There's the first hint of sunlight starting to creep through the curtains and 'Lantis' song is slowly changing from a sleepy, nighttime lullaby to a lazy, early morning tune. They'll have to get up soon.

"You've got time to sleep," John murmurs, sounding as if he might just fall asleep himself, however impossible that might be.

Rodney wraps an arm around John's waist and slips a hand just under the waistband. "Then we've got time for this too."

And John, being John, needs no further encouragement. He closes the already small space between them in an instant, kissing him with languid intensity as the hand around his waist slides its way under his shirt.

Not one to be passive, Rodney joins in the assault. It's a slow attack. Clothing is pushed aside in the laziest of manners, as if it wasn't a hindrance to their ultimate goal, John takes his time, exploring every plane and angle with his hands, as is his wont every time they take their time like this, and Rodney does the same with his mouth, indulging in the oral fixation John mocks him for at all other times but these.

Then, just when things finally start to speed up, when john's hands stop moving teasingly up and down the inside of his thigh and start moving with real purpose instead, there's a pounding on the door.

He ignores it for as long as he can, concentrating instead on the feeling as John takes them both in hand. But the knocking continues and the feeling starts to fade away as the niggling question of why someone on Atlantis would be knocking instead of using the door chime creeps into his mind.

And then Rodney wakes up, alone on the cot he's pushed into one corner of his office at Area 51, three million light years from the only man he could ever imagine spending the rest of his life with, or even wanting to.


	6. Invisible Labor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor."
> 
> Victor Hugo, Les Misérables  
> \- - -  
> Because the next installment is being fickle, immediately post part 3 of "Iudex"

"Okay," Iohannes says brightly when he thinks he can breathe again, wanting to do anything to dispel the awful silence that had fallen over the Gate Room after the 'pons astris' had disconnected behind Rodney and Radek.

Lorne looks at him with such expectation in his eyes that Iohannes has to take another deep, steadying breath that he really doesn't need except for the fact that it reminds him he was mortal once (and will be again, if he has anything to say about it). It reminds him that the paths he sees cannot be discerned by other eyes. That he has half an eternity to walk the road he has chosen for himself, but that those he walks it for are far more transient and could easily not live to see the end.

He must be quick. He must not stumble. He could take three hundred years to get the Terrans back to Atlantis, but anything more than thirty is almost guaranteed to keep him from seeing Rodney ever again and taking even as few as three is likely to loose him to someone who isn't three million lightyears away.

"Okay," Iohannes says again, clapping his hands together for added emphasis. "C'mon, buddy; we've got work to do."


	7. Saved At All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."
> 
> Isaac Asimov  
> \- - -  
> Set anytime during S2/S3 to date in the Ancient!John 'Verse. Because silvershadowkit commented in my quest for prompts yesterday: _Something about Wormhole X-Treme, regular or Pegasus. I know that Iohannes seems to like it, but I kinda want to know what the rest of the cast thinks. I haven't seen much SG-1, so I don't know all that much about it canonically. I'm interested to see what your take on it it._ IDK if this is what she had in mind, but it's what happened. Oh, and my meta'ish thoughts on both "series" can be found [here.](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/91107.html)

Iohannes loves Star Trek for it's bad special effects and it's ability to ask hard questions – the ones that need to be asked - in ways that aren't immediately obvious. And if "Where No Man Has Gone Before" reminded him of the morality plays written during the Major Diaspora, well, he's not telling, if only because that involves sharing more of his people's history with the Terrans than he thinks he'll ever be comfortable with.

He loves the spin-offs too: The Next Generation for it's simplistic belief that all a world's problems could be solved in a single episode; Deep Space Nine for it's willingness to tackle the darker side of things; Voyager for its willingness to break the mould, and Enterprise for all its potential.

And that's just one franchise.

He loves Doctor Who – the new and the original – because, well, it's good to see someone who's lost his entire species and found reasons to go on, even if he is just a fiction character in a fictional universe that probably would have given Father nightmares with it's inability to follow the rules of logic or physics. Andromeda too, for that matter, though he's not as big a fan.

He can appreciate Battlestar Galactica – the remake – for what it is, even if a group of humanoids fleeing through space after the genocide of their people hits a little too close to home (he'd heard enough stories about the Migration Period growing up that he'd not been able to watch the nuclear bombings of the Colonies without becoming ill, even if he'd given Rodney other excuses for why he'd fled the room). After a few episodes, he even finds its treatment of AIs more amusing than absurd.

And don't even get Iohannes started on how much he adores Firefly.

But his favourite – his absolute favourite – is Wormhole X-treme and (no matter how many times the Terrans mock him for it) it always will be. At first it was simply because watching the show could get him out of reading SGC mission reports and trying to figure out how on Lantea a group of humanoid hunter/gathers had managed to evolve to the point of having microprocessors and nuclear weapons, but before long he genuinely comes to like the show. Because, despite its campiness in the earlier seasons, its real. It's not just a fun way to spend forty-five minutes, it's the best window he has to understanding the Terrans' Stargate Program without actually having been there. It certainly puts Thor's relationship with the Terrans in a lot better perspective, even if they call him Tlaloc on the show, to say nothing of illustrating for Iohannes just why the Terrans revere his race so, even if if its not gotten to the point of actual worship.

(And if season five has the added bonus of showing what Rodney – or, at least, his Wormhole X-treme analogue, Doctor Andrew Winters – was like before he met him, well, Iohannes isn't telling any tales.)

Even if this wasn't the case, Iohannes thinks he'd like the show anyway. Even if it wasn't just a cover story for some Air Force project, it's real in a way the other shows don't quite manage. It's about real people...

It's is the story of the Terrans' progression from a somewhat stumbling, young race into the intergalactic powerhouse he sees now (and even if it were just a story, he thinks it would be a great one to watch). It's the story of how the Terrans came to take up the mantel Thor has granted them as the Fifth Race of the old Alliance. More than that, it's honest in how they came by that title, those powers: by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Even in its worst moments, Wormhole X-treme shows how the Terrans learned from other races' mistakes. It gives him hope that they'll continue to learn and survive to build something far grander than any of the old Alliance could ever imagine.


	8. Son of the Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: 'Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?'"
> 
> Isaiah 14:12–17  
> \- - -  
> between "Iudex" and "Exsul", Because I've been thinking about giving Iohannes a new cognomen for a while now. Though I still plan to write up how he got his first one, Licinus, as a drabble one day. I might just do it now, since the next installment is making me mildly mad.

"Do you need some help?"

Surprised by the question, he nearly jumps a mile, cracking his head on the next-highest shelf before he manages to remove it completely from the cabinet he's been rifling through in what remains of the Expedition's canteen kitchen.

"My apologies," she - for the voice very clearly belongs to a she - says. "I did not mean to startle you, only it looked like you were having trouble. Do you need help?'

It's been a month since Expedition left (well, three weeks, but who's counting?) and Evan doesn't think he'll ever get used to the Ancients' precise, formal way of speaking. He doesn't think he'll get used to a lot of things about them, though he's trying. They're not making it easy for him, however, thus today's mission.

"I was just looking to see if the cook staff left behind a coffee maker." He's been using the old campfire method until now, but practice has left him far from perfect and all he really wants is a decent cup of coffee if he's going to have to put up with a hundred and three people who could have taught Doctor McKay a thing or two about vainglory and conceit. "Did you want something?"

The woman plucks at the laces of her vambraces and refuses to meet his eyes - something Evan's come to discover is the Ancient equivalent of, 'I don't want to have this conversation, but I'm sucking it up anyway,' - but her voice is clear and melodious when she says, "I need to speak with Icarus."

Icarus is what they call the Colonel now instead of Licinus. He'd asked about it once, wondering what a myth about flying too close to the sun might have to do with anything, but apparently the legend has more of a fallen angel vibe to the Ancients - something to do with the Haeresis, Origin, and its early days in the galaxy they've never given any name but home after all these millennia.


	9. Inside That Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof."
> 
> ― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams  
> \- - -   
> between "Iudex" and "Exsul", I started this after a convo with melodysparks, hoping it would lead me to the next installment, but, alas, that alludes me, so have this instead.

Evan watches – first with amusement and then with growing concern – as his commanding officer riffles through his kitchen cabinets. What he's looking for Evan can only guess at, but based off the things the Colonel is pulling out, he's almost afraid to find out.

Needless to say, he's more than a little surprised when what's finally set in front of him is a glass tea pot, a pair of novelty coffee cups, and an ampoule holding a half-dozen white pills.

He's even more surprised when Sheppard pushes the ampoule his way and says, "You'll want these," before asking, "How d'you take your tea?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, you're right. Stupid question," Sheppard nods, as if that is the most reasonable response to his question. "It's not like we keep lemon around and I never picked up the taste for sugar, so black it'll have to be." He gives the ampoule another gentle push in Evan's direction. "'Lantis is about three seconds away from going into full-on lamentations mode, and believe you me, you'll need these before the end." Almost as an afterthought he adds, "They're Alteran painkillers I lifted off of Diana. Think more co-codaprin than, I dunno, whatever that stuff is Carson gives out when he has to go poking about someone's insides."

"I see," Evan says, picking up the ampoule. He can hear the city's song, which is growing from a faint, trembling warble to the wails of the woebegone in the short amount of time it's taken them to get from the Gate Room to the Colonel's suite. "I think I'll hold off for now."

Sheppard shrugs and pours the tea. It's blood red and smells like one of the flowers that grows on the mainland. "To each their own, but don't say I didn't warn you when your brain start dribbling out your ears like scrambled eggs."

"That what you've done, Sir?"

"No point. Pills don't exactly work on the Ascended."

"But tea does?"

"Not really, no," Sheppard says with a small smile that entirely fails to reach his eyes, "but I remain ever hopeful." He watches the Colonel lift the mug to his lips and take a cautionary sip that ends in closed eyes and the hints of a real smile.

"Is that the plan, Sir?"

"Is what the plan?" he asks, not opening his eyes at all.

"To hope that we can get the Expedition to return before either of us is driven mad by your extended family?"

Sheppard's smile turns positively Cheshire. "Something like that, yes."


	10. Names

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Names have power.”
> 
> ― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief  
> \- - -  
> between "Iudex" and "Exsul"

In the old Alteran legends, in the days when their people were still confined to one planet and still worshiped nonexistent gods, it was said names had power. That to know someone's true name was to give one power over that person - or even a god. Such is the stuff of all the greatest Pre-Migration literature: power-mad kings seeking the names of the gods so as to bend them to his will; nefarious wizards using the true name of otherwise good-natured knights to force them to do terrible deeds; virtuous paupers accidentally learning the names of the divine and choosing not to use this power, only to be rewarded handsomely by the god in question.

Of course, the Altera haven't believed that sort of thing for millennia now. Names have no more power than the idols they'd once expended so much effort to learn the names of - which is to say, none at all.

The tradition lingers, however, in the 'cognomen' they give each other.

Iohannes gets his first 'cognomen' before he's even ten minutes old, the story being that, after Mother had been dragged away from her work long enough to birth him, her one comment before surrendering him to 'Matertera' Catalina for care had been that she did not think children could be born with quite so much hair on their heads. Thereafter he was known almost exclusively as 'Licinus', which meant 'hairy' in one of the older Loegrian tongues.

Needless to say, Iohannes never cared for the name. Which is probably why he doesn't argue so much when Danelia and her crew start calling him 'Icarus'.

Icarus, after the brother of the one who started the 'Schisma', who tried so hard to bring his brother back to the right path but ended up becoming the most fearsome 'Haeretici' of them all. Icarus was worst traitor in the billion-year history of the Altera. His apostasy cost the lives of dozens of 'urbes-naves' and eventually forced their people from their home galaxy.

It should make him burn to be compared to that deceiver. It should make him want to throw the fit that Danelia had surely intended when she'd come up with the 'cognomen.' But it doesn't. Partly it's because 'Iohannes Ianideus Icarus Imperator' has a certain ring to it, (one which annoys Danelia and her crew a lot more than it bothers him), but mostly it's because the Terrans have repurposed the name into their own myths, as they often do. Icarus isn't a villain to them, he's just a guy who made an honest mistake, which maybe the original Icarus was too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious, "Iohannes Ianideus Icarus Imperator" would be pronounced like: "eye-oh-HAN-ays eye-ann-EEED-us eye-CARE-us im-PEER-eh-tour". His former 'congomen,' "Licinus" would be pronounced like "lye-SIN-us".
> 
> Also, "Trebal" is his mother's 'cognomen,' and I've found a word in Latin that might be a good retcon for it: 'tribulus,' meaning 'star thistle', which, [if you take a look at it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Starthistle), is rather thorny, like I rather imagine her being. But I couldn't find a way to work it into here, so....


	11. Not Found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children."
> 
> ― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief  
> \- - -   
> between "Iudex" and "Exsul", For rhia_starsong, who asked: I've been wondering what 'Rory thinks of the Alterans coming back and taking over Atlantis.

Aurora is confused.

Their sister Tria has been found, but not brought home. The Terrans have left and taken all their toys with them, only to be replaced people they are told are Alterans but act nothing like Pater and don't seem to like Pater or Maritus very much, which is just strange because they are the best people in the whole wide universe. They've tried asking Mater about it, but Mater is so upset about whatever is going on that she actually yelled at them.

Mater yelling is the worst.

They don't understand why any of this is happening. Everyone was happy before, and then Tria's crew came and everybody stopped being happy. Aurora don't get why they don't just leave so the Terrans can come back and everyone can be happy again.

They've tried asking their maritus, Argathelianus, but all he will tell them is that it is, "complicated," and that it's, "hard to explain."

Aurora knows that their runtimes are corrupted, that there is something wrong with them that Mater and Pater and Argathelianus don't ever talk about where they can hear, but they are still smart. They know all the Great Migration Songs and can open a hyperspace window all by themselves. They can operate all their systems and keep their platform operational with only the minimum of organic assistance (though they greatly prefer having it). They think they could understand whatever is so complicated that's making everyone sad, if only Mater and Pater and Argathelianus would give them a chance. After all, they're not a child any more, even if everyone insists on treating them that way.


	12. Turned Skyward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."  
> ― Leonardo da Vinci  
> \- - -  
> after part 2 of "Exsul", the start of part 3 of "Exsul" that wasn't

6 December, 2006 / 33 Days After The Second Exodus

When this is all over, Evan decides, he is cashing in all of his vacation days and sleeping for a week. He's been up for almost three days straight, and while normally this wouldn't be a problem - far from ideal, maybe, but hardly problematic, - he's spent most of that piloting Rory through hyperspace by himself, which is an exhausting proposition under the best of circumstances.

Piloting a 'Palantis'-class warship isn't like sitting in the Control Chair. The Chair - the 'cathedra', whatever the hell Evan's supposed to call it now that he's basically forsaken all claims to Earth and joined the Colonel's brand of Ancients in every way but formal oath - is different. That's pure neural interface. It's tiring, but... but it's like his mind becomes an extension of Atlantis when he does that. The city outsources certain issues to him and, in return, she helps keep his body functioning, so that, in the end, a drone training exercise is no more enervating than a long run.

Piloting 'Aurora' is different. That mental component is still there, but it's more intrusive. Whereas 'Lantis can slip almost quietly into his mind and do what needs be done without notice, Rory is hardly subtle. She has less computing power than the city-ship - the 'urbs-navis' - and less experience with the deeper levels of mental connection that are the province of 'pastores'. For these same reasons, some tasks must be handled manually, with conscious effort that's difficult to expend while his head's being borrowed for the kinds of problem analysis Rory herself is incapable of handling.

It's exhausting even at the best of times, and this isn't anywhere near close to the best of times.


	13. Reach Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Loneliness leads to nothing good, only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it."  
> ― Joss Whedon  
> \- - -   
> A start of part 3 of "Exsul" that wasn't. Again. This installment might kill me.

5 December, 2006 / 32 Days After The Second Exodus - Midway, The Void

"Huh."

/'Pas-tor?/ Rory asks, clearly curious about what he could find so strange about 'Tria', who's moored right where the Ancients abandoned her: three hundred kilometers from the incomplete Midway Station and a third of a mile off their bow. /Is some-thing wrong?/

Evan pushes himself out of the pilot's chair and moves closer to the viewscreen, examining the other ship more carefully. "Your sister doesn't look all that damaged, does she?" There aren't any gaping holes in her hull, no battle scars that haven't been long patched over. She's been through the wars, but not recently. "She looks a lot better than you did when the Colonel brought you home."

/'Pa-ter' says that Dan-el-i-a I-val Hel-i-a Nav-arch-a is a li-ar and a cow-ard. That she made our sis-ter a cow-ard as well when she or-dered 'Tri-a' a-way from bat-tle, leav-ing doz-ens of our sis-ters die when 'Ma-ter' need-ed us most./

"That's what we're here to find out. Can you run a full sensor sweep so I can get a better idea of the damage?"

Rory's song transitions briefly into a complicated, darting melody that could easily be called the audible equivalent of a peacock showing off its tail. /Of course,/ she tells him at the end of it.

"Thanks, Rory."

'Aurora' hums happily for a moment before a wireframe diagram of the other ship appears on the viewscreen, rotating through several angles before settling into a standard cross-section. /The dam-age to 'Tri-a' is neg-lig-i-ble. Her hull is frac-tured in sev-er-al pla-ces, with most the dam-age con-cen-trat-ed a-round her en-gine com-part-ment./ The sections in question blink in blue on the screen. /Hy-per-drive en-gines are non-op-er-at-ion-al. Sub-light en-gines are at for-ty-one per-cent func-tion-al-it-y. Shields, life sup-port, and and nav-i-gat-ion systems are op-er-at-ion-al. We do no un-der-stand why she was left be-hind. A-lone, 'Mar-i-tus'. A-lone, in the cold and the dark. Why would they do that?/


	14. They Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We love the things we love for what they are."  
> Robert Frost  
> \- - -   
> Post-"Percantator"

**11 December, 2006 / IVX Martius 'ab foedere conditi' I - Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus**

It has all the makings for a lazy Sunday morning. There's nothing he has to do, nowhere he has to go - and now that the others are gone, nothing he has to worry about either. He can just stay here in his soft, warm bed and doze for as long as he wants.

It's not something he normally has time or inclination for, but right now everything is perfect, from the heavy lassitude of his muscles to the solid back pressed tightly to his chest to the faint hint of warm, buttery light creeping through the porthole. It's a wonderful, heady feeling and if there is any justice in the universe, it would let him bottle this moment up forever and set it somewhere outside of time and space, where it could never be tainted by anything bad or ugly or loud, only visited when he needs to remember why he started down this path. Why he forswore all his oaths and forsook the planet of his birth:

Because people matter.

Because there are some duties that others can't absolve one of.

Because everyone must leave their childhood home.

Because (and this is the one he's almost afraid to admit to himself) Earth has changed. Once, they stood up for what was right. Going up against the goa'uld was the moral thing to do, but now that the Ori are their enemies, their battles seem to be less about defending the defenceless and more about maintaining their hegemony over the galaxy. They explore the universe beating their fists upon their chests, and what was once pure and noble and beautiful has become tainted by too many secrets and too much power and too few limitations.

Yes, Evan had chosen Atlantis because it is home, but even a month of thinking of himself as Lantean and not Tau'ri is enough to notice some of what he'd been too close to see before. The age of exploration is over, at least as far as Earth is concerned. The Old Guard is taking the place of the innovators and risk-takers, bringing with them all the worst parts of the military, and before long everything that he loved about the SGC will be taken over by big military and their pointless rules and ever stupider ideas about their role in the galaxy.

He had Rory in orbit of Earth for the better part of a week. He could have let the SGC know what Sheppard had asked him to do at any time, but he didn't. He hadn't even thought about it at the time. How much of that was sense of duty to his new command and how much loyalty to a man he, in all truth, knows next to nothing about?

But Sheppard has never wanted power, that much he's always known. He will change the galaxy for its own sake but his plans mean less to him than the people in them. That's enough to get on with, and the rest Evan can figure out when the morning light becomes to harsh to ignore.

So he closes his eyes and spoons himself closer to Radek - a difficult task, given how close they already are - and lets himself drift through the currents of his subconsciousness back to sleep.

* * *  
Only to be startled awake all too soon by a sharp prod to his mind that sends him scrambling reaching for his weapon. Before his mind can quite process that it's only Rory screeching at an ungodly loud volume (and hour), the ship continues, /Ar-gat-hel-i-an-us!/ making each syllable a bright staccato burst that have him rushing to cover his ears-

-which isn't really such a great thing to do when already precariously perched on the edge of a narrow bed, and sends him tumbling to the floor even as 'Lantis whispers harshly-

/'Aurora'! What did we say?/

/Don't break the 'pas-tor',/ Rory repeats dully before insisting, /but we weren't! We were just try-ing to-/

/Apologise to your 'frater'./

/But 'Ma-ter'-!/

/Now, 'Aurora'./

Sulkily, /Sor-ry, Ar-gat-hel-i-an-us,/ she manages at a more reasonable volume.

Evan groans, throwing an arm over his eyes but otherwise staying as he fell. "This is not happening," he mutters. "This is not my life." This denial is just about all he has the inclination for, his body not quite having caught on to the fact it's supposed to be awake now. Maybe if he just keeps his eyes closed he can pretend. Maybe if he closes them tightly enough, it will never have happened at all.

Sounds of a sleepy shuffle come from the bed above. "Evan? 'Jste umírá'?" Radek murmurs tiredly.

"Probably," he sighs, lowing his arm and trusting in his translation matrix. "I'm not sure yet."

"Ah. 'Probud' mê kdyz se rozhodnete'," he says with minimum clarity into his pillow, and before Evan can get any further clarification the sound of soft snorting fills the room.

Evan snorts, glad at least one of them is getting their lie in. "So, Rory," he asks as he tries to untangle himself from the sheets he'd managed to take with  
him during his fall, "what is it you wanted to tell me so badly?"

/On-ly that 'Pa-ter' is com-ing, but that's not im-por-tant an-y-more be-cause he's-/

The door chime goes off.

/-al-read-y here,/ she finishes lamely. Then, obviously seeing no point in delaying the inevitable, she slides the doors to his quarters open. Naturally. Because his life has somehow managed to become a comedy of errors in between all the sex and treason.

Or something. Evan's not sure all his pistons are firing at the moment. (Whether that's because of the embarrassment or the concussion he's most likely sporting is another question entirely. He's investing in carpeting next chance he gets.)

The Colonel manages three steps into the room before noticing his predicament. He pauses and appears to consider turning around before asking (quite levelly, it must be said), "Argathelianus?"

"Yes?"

"Why are you on the floor?"

Evan points at the overhead. It seems the most diplomatic explanation.

"Yeah," he says with a fond note in his voice, "I've had those days."

He doesn't offer Evan a hand up, or look at him askance for staying on the floor, or even offer him a knowing smirk for Radek's still-sleeping presence in his bed. What he does do is rock back on his heels as he examines the small changes Evan's made to 'Aurora's' Captain's Quarters since basically moving in a month ago to escape the guy's hell of an extended family. For some reason what he sees makes him happy, because the already chipper smile Sheppard's sporting becomes almost ridiculous in the moments before he asks:

"So, I know you only just got back, but you mind running another errand for me?"


	15. Pretend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."  
> Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night  
> \- - -  
> post-"Percantator"

11 December, 2006 CE / XIV Mar. a.f.c. I -- Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

The thing is, Rodney has absolutely no idea where the patio chairs came from. They certainly hadn't been here when the Expedition left, which leaves only the possibility that Lorne had made off them at the same time he abducted the rest of those who'd chosen to come back to Atlantis, which is all kinds of strange but still a better explanation for their existence than their having been in some sort of Ancient storage room for the last ten thousand years and only dredged out now. There's something distinctly made-at-lowest-bidding-price about them, even if they're plausibly Ancient in style, and, as much as he now knows about the Gate Builders, he'd rather go on believing in their ability as engineers for the time being.

It's a rare dry day in the middle of the rainy season. The sun is beating down furiously, reminding them all that 'rainy season' is synonymous with 'tropical summer'. He can already feel the skin cancer setting in beneath the thin sheen sweat he's managed to develop in all of the fifteen minutes he's been outside, made all the worse because of the honest-to-God 'fire' John's trying to build in an old oil drum someone converted into a barbecue in the first year of the Expedition. It still manages to look sturdier than the chairs, which is somewhat worrisome.

"God, why are we out here? It's got to be 38℃ out here 'before' your utterly unnecessary heat source over there and 'some' of us are still subject to heat stroke."

John rolls his eyes - something Rodney's sure he never did until after they started seeing each other. "One, you're not going to get heat stroke. Two, water doesn't boil itself. And, three, if you're going to give me a pet name, can it not be 'god'? 'Cause that's just weird on so many levels."

"I wasn't-" Rodney begins. Then changing directions rapidly, "Do you want a pet name?"

"Well," John says dryly, "it's not like 'John' is really my name."

Frowning, "I thought you liked the name 'John.'"

"I don't mind it. It's not like I expect you call me 'Iohannes' or 'Licinus' or 'Icarus."

"Whoa, wait a second," Rodney says, sitting up straighter to get a better look at John, who's still trying to get the barbecue started. The Ancients might have mastered fire a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but John clearly never got that lesson, which ought to be the most worrisome thing about all of this but is somehow painfully endearing instead. "I thought Lorne was just joking about the whole 'Icarus' thing."

"Why would he joke about that?"

"This is Lorne we're talking about: he's voluntarily sleeping with Zelekna; something's obviously not screwed in tight enough upstairs with him."

"I like him. 'Sides, you've gotta admit it's a cooler nickname than 'Licinus.'"

"I dunno," he admits, leaning back in his chair as he muses on it. "The story's all hubris and failed ambition and bad engineering."

"I wouldn't say that. I mean," John continues over the metallic clanging that arrises as he tries to replace the grate on the makeshift barbecue, sans fire,

"Icarus had a pretty nice run before the end. That's all any of us can really ask."

"Well, that's a depressing sentiment."

"Is it? I rather like it."

"Of course you do. You're the 'go out in a blaze of glory' type. I'd rather like to live long enough to see the fruits of my labour."

"I-" John begins, clearly about to come back with some sort of flippant remark. He must reconsider it, because what he says next ends up being, "I can't just sit back and watch people suffer when I can do something about it. Which," he adds with a touch of black humour, "was the real Icarus' problem too, I guess."

"The 'real' Icarus?"

"Yeah. He was, well," he leans back against the observation deck railing, "the easiest way to describe it is probably like a member of the UN Security Council, but only with real political power - and this was right before the 'Schisma', when the line was really getting drawn between those who believed the 'Haeresis' and those who knew better. We're talking like sixty-five point eight million years ago, seven hundred thousand years before 'Lantis was even built.

"But anyway, the way things were going for him, he was going to come into some serious power. He'd probably have elected in charge of the whole Alteran Caravan before much longer, had things gone differently. Only his brother, Phaeton, joined the 'Haeretici', and Icarus told the folks in charge that he could redeem his brother - go undercover, if you will, and break apart the movement from the inside. Stop the whole war before it ever started."

"It didn't work, I take it?"

"No, it didn't." There's a long pause, less as if John's debating what to say and more as if how to say it. "He ended up becoming the worst 'Haeretici' of them all. Think a little less Judas and quite a bit more Lucifer."

This has Rodney sitting bolt upright in an instant. "Your cousin nicknamed you after then Ancient devil?"

"Less Pretty much."

"And here I thought my family was messed up."

"I like your sister."

"She's a vegetarian."

"I'll try not to hold it against her," John says dryly, pushing away from the railing and returning to the barbecue. He snaps his fingers and a bright, brilliant flame erupts inside.


	16. The Most Important Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The most important day in a man’s life is the death of his father.”  
>  Sigmund Freud  
> \- - -   
> set post-Haegria during "Exsul"

10 December, 2006 -- Arlington, Terra, Avalon

Richard Prescott Woolsey the Third dies on a cold, clear day in December without ever asking for his son. A good deal of this can be attributed to the Alzheimer's that eventually takes his life, but even without it Richard - the youngest Richard, the Fourth Richard, perpetually called Ivey because his parents couldn't be bothered to give him his own name, one without the weight and 'history' of three other lives behind it - doubts that his Father would have asked for him. Richard the Younger's existence was only incidental to Richard the Elder, mostly ever considered when it came time to pay his school fees. 

It's been a long time since he was in school. 

Either way, he's in a meeting with the new Commandant of the Marine Corps, and couldn't have gotten away even if someone from the facility had thought to call him. It is more important that the Commandant, who's less than a month into his new office and has absolutely nothing in his distinguished service history that might prepare him for navigating the delicate political situation between Earth and the alien city at the heart of a fledgling empire three million light years away. None of the Joint Chiefs really do. They are soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines. Their jobs are to fight the wars. Richard is more of a diplomat than a lawyer these days; it's his job to prevent them. 

It's not until he's gotten home from reminding the Commandant that Atlantis is the goose that lays the golden eggs they'll need if they ever want to defeat the Ori, who are the real enemy, that he gets the news. Sandwiched between a message from his wireless company about lowering his monthly bill and a notification from the personal assistant to the junior-most aide to the Secretary of Defense that his meeting for ten am tomorrow has been rescheduled for eight-fifteen is the news: Richard Prescott Woolsey the Third had died at about the same time Richard Prescott Woolsey the Fourth had started rattling off predicted casualty statistics for a Lantean-Tau'ri war, and if it isn't too much trouble, could he come by and pick up his father's personal effects so they can move the next fancy name on the waiting list into his room?

Though it's too late, he calls the facility and tells them he'll be there tomorrow afternoon. And then he goes into his bedroom, studiously ignoring the liquor cabinet as he passes, and tries to sleep. 

What he ends up doing is kicking off his shoes, loosening his tie, and clutching at his pillow until the small hours of the night, feeling so miserably, utterly alone that he wants to call his ex-wife, because having someone care enough to make him feel as small as she can has to be infinitely better than living in a world devoid of anyone who cares at all.


	17. About a Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It's about a girl on the cusp of becoming someone. ... A girl who may no know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out."
> 
> Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper  
> \- - -   
> Post-"Exsul".

Jennifer never intended to be in this position. It's just, her family has never been well off. She'd gotten through undergrad on scholarships and willpower alone, with most of the difference being paid for by a sympathetic great-aunt who really didn't have the money to spare. Medical school had been more scholarships and a boatload of federal loans that, frankly, terrified her to think about. But that was okay, because she'd make enough after she got her M.D. to pay them off before too long, or so she figured. Dad assured her that would be the case, anyway, and he'd never steered her wrong, so she trusted him on that.

 

But then Georgetown had happened - or, rather, her residency there, which had concluded about the same time as her attending had been looking for someone to replace him on the Médecins sans Frontières mission to Côte d'Ivoire that he'd agreed to go on before things started to get serious with his girlfriend. Doctor Wallis hadn't wanted to leave and, well, she'd minored in French, so it'd seemed like a good idea at the time. She'd enjoyed it, and signed on for a second mission, and a third, and, well, one thing had led to another.

 

And then she came back stateside for Christmas of '04. That's when they find out about the cancer, all the little things Dad's shared with her over monthly satellite phone calls finally adding up to something she kicks herself for not having put together before. It's colon cancer and perfectly operable (not that they'd known that at the beginning) and, well, insurance companies don't care if one's daughter is a doctor. The bills start adding up fast, until the numbers bleeding on the page grow to such a size that they threaten to crush her with their weight. Or may

 

So Jennifer takes a position at Sacred Heart in Eau Claire to stay close to Dad through the chemo and the surgery, but that's not the kind of medicine she wants to practice - let alone the kind that would pay the bills - so she starts looking for something better as soon as Dad's prognosis starts trending upwards.

 

She applies to the multinational research service doing work in Antarctica on a whim. She doesn't think she'll get a posting (it's supposedly very competitive), but Doctor Wallis had told her to try when she'd called her old attending asking if he knew about open positions that might fit her. Jennifer's not so sure, but Simon had been right about Côte d'Ivoire, so she's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, the money is supposedly phenomenal.

 

But, again, Jennifer doesn't expect anything to come of it, except it 'does', which is how she somehow finds herself an employee of the United States Air Force, being shepherded by a young man in dress uniform towards a black Lincoln town car minutes after landing at the Colorado Springs airport. She doesn't know what the US military might have to do with the supposedly-international NGO she'd thought she'd applied to, let alone what Colorado might have to do with Antarctica, but there it is, and she's still trying to figure out if "multinational research service" had really be code for human trafficking or the mob all a long when the airmen opens the car door for her.


	18. Not The Victim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."
> 
> Nora Ephron  
> \- - -  
> Another vingette, because my idea of female POVs for the rest of "Medici" is thus unfruitful in plot, but provided this instead. Oh, and the Carthage in question is in NC, and I've sorta been sitting on this Teldy story for like 18 months.

28 December, 2006 – Colorado Springs, Terra, Avalon

Anne hasn't been home since the summer of '01. Even that had been a bit of a wash, lasting all of the twenty-five minutes it had taken to grab Miranda's things and throw them in the back of her car, and had been punctuated by so much shouting that the neighbors on both sides had called in noise complaints that had embarrassed her parents to no end. It had been worth it, though, to get Miranda out of that house, and even if the next two years had been rough and had probably culled most of her career's momentum, well, Anne couldn't find it within her to be too upset. It was better that Miranda was with her rather than in a grave of her own making, as Anne had feared she'd arrive to find during the whole drive five hour drive from Quantico.

Not counting the shouting incident, she's barely talked to her family since leaving for Annapolis. She used to get silted, awkward phone calls from some of her brothers and sisters each year around Christmas, but Joseph and Aaron had taken Mom's side of things following The Miranda Incident, and her younger siblings are still of the age where basic social nuances – birthday cards, phone calls, thank you letters – escape them.

She'd not called them before leaving for Iraq. The only precaution she'd taken then had been to update her will to make sure her kindly, widowed upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Franks, would get custody of then-sixteen-year-old Miranda if something were to happen to her rather than Mom and Dad.

She'd not called them before she went through the Stargate for the first time either, eighteen months later. She just called up her lawyer and made sure everything was in place to pay for Miranda's college if she were to die.

But this time it's different. This time it's Atlantis, and while Anne doesn't trust half the stories that come out of that place, she does trust the body bags she sees pass through the Gate with each dial-in. The Wraith take no prisoners; they just consume their captives' life-forces and toss their mummified shells out the nearest airlock when they're through. And while she may have burned all her bridges with her parents years ago, they're still her parents. They deserve a goodbye before a casualty assistance officer arrives at their door. So she dials the number and leans back against the creaking headboard of her crap bed in her crappier hotel room, pulling the phone cradle into her lap to give her a bit farther reach.

Anne doesn't think she breathes at all while it rings. She's half-certain that her parents are going to know it's her calling, even with the hotel number showing up on the caller ID, and not bother to answer at all.

But answer they do. "Hello?"

"Hi, Mom."

"Mary Anne?"

Anne swallows. "Yes, Mom." She wants to kick herself for how small she sounds – how ridiculous and young just hearing her mother's voice can make her feel. She's thirty-seven years old, for fuck's sake. She's a Major in the United States Marine Corps and, with any luck, she'll be a Lieutenant Colonel before much longer. She is signed on to be Colonel Telford's executive officer for the Second Expedition. She's going to be the highest-ranking woman ever to be assigned to Atlantis base, the second-highest ranking officer in the entire galaxy. She is going to kicking ass and taking names, and Pegasus is never going to have seen anything like her. But put her on the phone with her mother and all of that goes flying out the window.

"Why are you calling? Has someone died that I don't know about?"

And just like that, all her childish fondness disappears. "No, Mom. I'm fine. Miranda's fine. I know it's been awhile since I called…"

"Awhile," Mom repeats distastefully. "Is that what we're calling half-a-decade of no contact now? Because, Mary Anne, if it is, I'd rather wait to find out what you might classify as a long time before we try this again."

"I'll do my best," she says through gritted teeth, seriously wondering if it's not too late to just hang up and pretend this conversation never happened. Screw her parents. They don't deserve anything, not after all the shit they put her through – that they put Miranda through. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm being deployed soon. I can't tell you where, but it's very dangerous and there's a good chance I won't make it back. And I-" she swallows, "I left a letter for Miranda, in case something happens, but she's going to have questions. I want to know that you'll answer them for her."

"That child stopped being a part of our lives the moment you packed her into that car of yours and drove off with her."

"You were going to send her to one of those awful ex-gay camp!"

"What else was I supposed to do? She was committing a sin against God-"

"She fell in love," Anne interrupts, all the unfinished threads of their last conversation – their last shouting match – coming to the fore as if no time had passed at all.

"With another woman."

"So?"

"It's a sin," her mother repeats, with all the conviction of the closed-minded. If Mom had her way, the church wouldn't allow black people in the congregation either, to say nothing of Latinos, homosexuals, and anybody who's ever considered voting democrat. She's a bigot in the way only the wives of small-town preachers can be – casually, and with the whole host of heaven behind her.

"Love is not a sin, Mom."

"Well," Mom snorts, strengthened by the fire of her self-righteous indignation, "you'd believe that, wouldn't you?"

Anne bites her tongue. She doesn't want this argument. She'd spent her entire senior year, from the moment she applied to Annapolis to the moment she left for Plebe Summer, having this argument in one form or another. She loves her parents, or had once, but they were some of the most closed-minded people ever to walk the Earth. She was the eldest child, the eldest girl, and Anne was supposed to stay home and help Mom take care of Joseph and Aaron and Abraham and Lean and Rebecca and Issac – and Miranda, when she came. They didn't care that she wanted more from her life, that she wanted to get the hell out of Carthage and do something with her life beyond change diapers and by groceries and drive the kids to school and Girl Scouts and football practice and make sure they were all in their Sunday best for church more times a week than anyone with half a sense of morality ever needed to go. She'd not been cut out for that life. They had to have known it.

They just hadn't cared.

"You know what, Mom?" she says when she thinks she can talk without it turning into a string of profanities that would have made her first drill master weep with pride. "Just forget it. Forget I called. Forget everything. I won't make the same mistake again. You can go on living with your head up your ass and Miranda and I will go on with our lives, without you."

She slams the phone onto the receiver, viciously, and takes sick joy in the way it bounces off the cradle and towards the floor, dangling as far as its cord allows. Screw them. Screw them all. Sure, Miranda will have questions, but Anne's not ready by half to answer them, so she just has to make sure she doesn't die.


	19. Never Ordinary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was. Likewise, I never imagined that home might be something I would miss.”
> 
> Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children  
> \- - -   
> You know the drill. I liked it, but couldn't make it work. So here it goes. (Also, most of this was written on the back of about a foot of receipt paper at work on Sunday, which was particularly slow).   
> Set post-part 2 of "Medici"

"Carson," Doctor McKay calls out piqued, the moment the transporter doors open onto what's she's told is the second level of Tower Forty, which will eventually be the surgical suites of The Elizabeth Weir Imperial Healthcare Centre but which, for the moment, resemble nothing so much as the set of some sort of horror movie. Which is to say, lined by plastic sheeting behind which white lights and strange noises emanate. Jennifer half-expects someone wearing a hockey mask and wielding a chainsaw to jump out from any direction any moment now. "Where are you? You'd better be able to hear me. If I have to go hunting through all of the construction again to find you, I will not be held responsible for my actions."

"Alright!" a voice bellows back from behind some of the plastic sheeting. "Alright! Hold your horses. I just need a moment to-"

"Stop messing with the carpenters and get out here. We can't afford to have our Chief of Medicine out of commission when you end up sawing your hand off in some kind of stupid and completely avoidable construction accident."

"I'm nae going to saw off my hand, Rodney," the voice says tiredly. It's much closer than before and, after a moment, is accompanied by a shadowy figure stepping out from between two pieces of sheeting.

The shadow resolves into a dark-haired man quite literally covered from head to toe in stone dust. The man – Carson, Jennifer presumes – makes a valiant effort to shake out his clothing, but it's a pointless effort. It succeeds just enough for Jennifer's mind to try to process the strange combination that is his clothing – jeans and an old-fashioned tunic made of un-dyed homespun – before he abandons the effort and continues instead-

"Who's the young lady?"

Jennifer fights the flush that she knows wants to form at this. She hates it when people point out how young she is – a carryover from going through college at the age most people were still in high school, she knows. She still doesn't have to like it, though, and with warm cheeks she answers, "I'm Jennifer Keller, the Expedition – the new Expedition's – Chief of Medicine."

Carson begins to say something – a comment on how, "They get younger every year, don't they?" she's sure, because that's what people always say when Jennifer introduces herself as a doctor. Either that or some less than subtle comment about her looks, which apparently exceed the attractiveness barrier men expect from female doctors.

But McKay interrupts, loudly. "Guess who they got to be the new me?"

"I donae know, Rodney," he sighs, apparently well used to this kind of thing. "Who?"

"Kavanagh!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"You're pulling my leg."

"I wish."

"Honestly, who thought that was a good idea?" Carson asks, running a hand through his hair with a puff of stone dust. He frowns at his hands after he finishes and tries to clean them off on his tunic, which only makes the problem worse. Frown deepening, he crosses the room and begins to dig through an open packing case propped in front of something Jennifer thinks is meant to be a reception desk, though she cannot read any of the unlit lettering upon it. "He hated it the first two times he was here, even going back with the Daedalus rather than finish out his second tour. What makes anyone think three is his lucky number?"

"I don't know. Maybe because he thought he'd be in charge this time?"

"That'll just make it worse," Carson insists, pulling out box of wet-naps.

"I know," Rodney snorts. "You should've seen his face when I told him that he'd still be reporting to me. Or Telford's when he was told John's placed Lorne in charge of the military. It was like kicking a puppy, only without all those annoying moral issues people go on about." Almost wistfully he adds, "I wish I'd had a camera."

Carson just shakes his head and continues working with the wet-wipes – which, to be honestly aren't making that much of a difference, but do at least assure her that the Émigré's Chief of Medicine, if she's remembering names and titles correctly, does at least ascribe to the germ theory of disease. "What about the Head of the Expedition?'

"That's the worst part: there isn't one. Telford is in charge of the military, Kavanagh is in charge of the civilians, and never shall the two meet. It's almost like having two different Expeditions entirely."


	20. Eleven Minutes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or--such is the pleasure they experience--they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.” 
> 
> Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes  
> \- - -  
> after "Medici", I have tried to write this for so many days now that I'm resigned to the fact that it's just not happening. It is immensely bad, I know, but popkin16 who has very kindly put up with all my moaning about it, said I should post and ask for feedback, and, well.... Here it is. You have been warned.

21 February, 2007 / XXXVI Apr. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

The lips on his are hot and incessant, technique long forgotten but more than making up for it in enthusiasm. Their hips start to lose their rhythm as they rock together, as sure a sign as their ragged breathing that they're close.

Eventually he has to pull away, the need for air momentarily overriding his desperate need to get closer, closer.

John's lips move to his neck, mouthing and biting and licking, and Rodney knows he's going to have to wear one of the ridiculous robes with a high collar tomorrow or else not hear the end of it from Zelenka for weeks, but he could hardly care less about any of that right now. All of his concentration is on the hand that's trapped somewhere between the slip and slide of their bodies and the one, two, three last sputtering strokes before John's biting into the meat of his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut as rays of impossibly bright light leak from under his lashes as he falls apart above him.

That's all that Rodney really needs, and before too long he's coming too with a strangled sort of shout.

They lay like that for a long while, with John's face pressed into the hollow of his neck, the silence of their rest broken only by who sets of heavy breathing and the roaring of the waves from beyond the open window. Rodney knows four languages, but none of them have anything close to a word for the warm, exultant, bubbly feeing coursing through his veins. It's not afterglow, though that might be part of it; it's absolute contentment. Rodney thinks he could easily live in this moment for the rest of eternity if allowed.

John must feel the same way, because his expression is beatific when he finally moves away, shifting so that he's now on his side facing Rodney rather than a solid presence above him. "Ille emendatus erat."


	21. Not Know Any Other Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."  
> ― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets  
> \- - -   
> A couple paragraphs I liked too much to delete from the newest chappie, but which needed to be taken out. Post-part 2.5 "Ascensiones"

It's strange how the simple things have come to mean so much when the prospect of eternity looms before him. The geography of their relationship is familiar, but none of its casual intimacies have ever managed to become anything less than electrifying. No kiss is perfunctory. No touch is routine. Eternity cannot compare to the tangle of legs in a shared bed, or an arm heavy around his waist, or the warm puffs of breath falling on the hollow of his neck.

Like this, he can almost forget his false flesh. He can pretend that everything he's ever wanted is coming to pass, and that one day he shall die and his ashes shall drift out into the universe, until all that he was mixes with all that ever was, forming new stars and new planets.

Yes. That sounds better to him than eternal life, stagnant and unchanging as the universe passes him by.


	22. One Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I had a dream the other night / About how we only get one life / Woke me up right after two / Stayed awake and stared at you / So I wouldn't lose my mind."
> 
> OneRepublic "Something I Need"  
> \- - -   
> This was to be the start of part 3 of "Ascensiones", but I decided I got too off track. Here is the first half of what it would ahve been.

18 March, 2007 / IXX Mai. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

Atlantis is happy.

Iohannes can feel it radiating outwards from her every surface, like an aura of gentle euphoria that can no more be escaped than it can be denied. It is in her essence, in her music, and, most notably, in the songs she sings. Gone are the sombre requiems, the mournful laments, and the disconsolate elegies that have so often filled her days since the Exodus (First and Second). Even her lullabies, which all too often have taken a forlorn turn at memories of children long since departed, have brightened lately.

The reason for all this cheer is not hard to find. The city has always loved pastores; they feed her ego and flatter her sensibilities. She has always loved Rodney as well, having sensed something within him the moment he stepped through the porta that she could not help but adore. Now that he is pastor, she couldn't be happier, even if his method of arriving at the agnomen may have left something to be desired.

Her unabashed joy at having Moreducus Ignius Custodia become Moreducus Ignius Pastor is even starting to win Iohannes over, though his initial feelings on the matter were decidedly mixed:

On one hand, Rodney as pastor is something he's wanted from the beginning. At first, it had been the simple desire to have one of the Terrans, who were still so new and strange to him, come to know (and understand, and love) Atlantis as he had. But as the years went on and they came to mean so much to each other, had it transformed into a yearning for Rodney to take his proper place in the family they've created out of a millennia-old urbs-navis, a newly sentient linter, and a Terran heres five hundred generations removed from the connection they'd claimed.

So, yes, Iohannes is more than a little thrilled that Rodney is finally pastor. The thing he has a problem with is the way he'd gone about it – which is to say, with untried technology jammed into his head instead of safe, sane nanoids like every other pastor has used for the better part of the last sixty-four million years. He could have gotten hurt - he could have died – and Rodney doesn't seem to see the problem with that. Neither of them does. They seem to have forgotten that Rodney is mortal, which means he only gets one life to risk pulling stupid stunts better left to people who are actually replaceable. That if he dies, Iohannes will lose him forever.

(Iohannes doesn't want to know what will become of him if Rodney dies before he manages to Descend. It will be bad enough watching everyone else he cares about grow old without him – die without him. But the thought of Rodney dying sets his blood on fire, a white-hot anger that he doesn't like to examine too closely for fear of what exactly he'll find.)

But Rodney's not dead. He's very much alive, his body curled into Iohannes' side in the darkness of their shared bedroom. There are books to read, movies to watch, paperwork to fill out, but Iohannes can't think of a better use for his time than to lie beside his sponsus through the night, counting his heartbeats and measuring the rise and fall of his breath. The books and movies and paperwork can keep, but every second that passes grows closer to the inevitable moment when Rodney will be gone forever. Iohannes wants to share as many of those seconds as possible before the end. However far away that may be.

Iohannes closes his eyes. It's not sleep, but it will do for now.


	23. Understand Itself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself."
> 
> Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos  
> \- - -  
> This was to be the second half of part 3, but I decided I got too off track.

18 March, 2007 / IXX Mai. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

"You've been watching me sleep again, haven't you?"

"Nope."

Rodney chooses to ignore this blatant lie. "Do I have to tell you again how creepy I find that?" he asks, drowsiness stealing most the bite from his threat. He's not awake enough to work up to real irritation yet, but give him time – and maybe a pillow not quite so comfortable as John's chest – and he'll get there soon enough. "Because I will. In great detail."

"As much fun as I'm sure that'll be, how about not?"

"You know, I'm ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent certain I told you the exact same thing about watching me sleep, and yet here we are, so obviously neither of us are getting what we want this morning."

"My eyes have been closed all night, Rodney. Promise."

He opens his own just enough to glare up at John. "Doesn't make it any less creepy."

"Unh uh. You only said the staring was creepy. You never said anything about the rest of it."

"It was implied!" Rodney insists, using the hand still on John's chest to push himself up so he can properly glower at him. "Right there in the fine print of the I do not want my Ascended fiancé watching me sleep all night because he doesn't need any, all senses are implied. Hearing, smelling, all of them."

"I like how you smell," John points out needlessly. Only the vaguest suggestion of dawn reaches them through the curtains, the light thin enough that their slightest movement in the brisk autumn wind changes his expression from a cocksure smile to the start of a frown.

"That's not the point."

"It's not?" he asks with (definitely) a frown.

"No, it's not."

"It should be."

"If the universe worked by shoulds, we'd have stumbled across a planet with a whole storeroom full of charged ZedPMs by now, discovered a sure-fire way to defeat the Wraith, and had to have knocked out the far wall to make room for all the Nobel Prizes we've won between the two of us."

"I know how the universe works, Rodney," John says glumly, and Rodney thinks that maybe that's the actual point here.

John is Ascended. Somewhere, locked inside the brain that is only a manifestation of his desire for a tangible body with all the trappings of mortality, is the knowledge of how the universe works: The nature of dark matter. The superfluous details of the universe's birth and the shape of its death. The exact method of unifying gravitation with electronuclear force and finding that final theorem, the theory of everything.

Rodney's not stupid. He's easily the smartest person in two galaxies. On his good days, he'd even go so far as to extend that qualification to the known universe. But the fact remains that he will never acquire even a tenth of the knowledge John now has, even if he devotes himself entirely to solving the unsolved problems in physics and doesn't concern himself with any of the fifty-odd crises that are happening on or around Atlantis at any given time.

So what Rodney doesn't understand is how, with the secrets of the universe his to thumb through, John to chooses to ignore all that in favour of watching him sleep. For all his genius, Rodney's nothing special. Not really. He was born on a planet of six billion people; he may be unusual, but he's by no means unique, not with odds like that.

When it all boils down to it, that's the creepy part here. He loves John, he really does, but sometimes the ferocity with which John loves him in return frightens him.

"Just don't do it anymore, okay?" he eventually sighs, rolling away to share his frustrations with the ceiling. But 'Lantis doesn't see the problem any more than John does and doesn't sympathize.

"Alright," John agrees, but that's a lie too. He gave up ten thousand years to protect Atlantis. There's no telling what he'd do for Rodney if it came down to it.

"Please tell me it's a least a reasonable hour of the day."

"Define reasonable."

"Sometime during which people who are not military are likely to be up."

"Ah. Then no."


	24. Drink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I drink to make other people more interesting."  
> ― Ernest Hemingway  
> \- - -   
> Yet another "might have been part 3" drabble.

No 85

An Ancient!John Drabble

"I drink to make other people more interesting."  
― Ernest Hemingway

18 March, 2007 / IXX Mai. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

"You look like you could use this," Jennifer tells him with a smile that's so sincere Rodney doesn't know whether to flinch from it or respond in kind. When she's close enough, she passes him one of the champagne flutes she's holding.

Rodney can no longer remember how much he's had to drink tonight, but he takes the glass anyway. It's been the longest day he can remember suffering through for a while and he's been nothing but surrounded by overenthusiastic well-wishers, would-be hangers-on, and political opportunists. Alcohol is making the task of not cutting each and every one of the imbeciles down to size less draining, and numbing the pain of having to listen to them talk and talk and talk. "You don't have to give me alcohol poisoning if you want an excuse to leave the party, you know."

She smiles more brightly than Rodney really feels is necessary for such a poor joke. Jennifer Keller is a beautiful woman, exactly his type in every way possible, and an exceptional doctor, but sometimes he finds it hard to be around her. It's not an issue of attraction (Rodney's engaged, not blind, but he's never felt compelled to act upon it), it's that she tries too hard. She tries to be less attractive than she is, less intelligent, less of anything that might cause her to be singled out in a crowd, as if she's afraid of being noticed, let alone noteworthy.

John does the same thing, but whereas he plays a game of smoke and mirrors, letting people see only what they want to see, Jennifer tries to fit herself into the box she's created in the image of so many less remarkable people. The real John is still there for people find if they look hard enough. But the real Jennifer is slowly disappearing, lost as she cuts everything which doesn't fit away, and it makes trying to carry on a conversation with the Expedition's chief of medicine an uncomfortable task even at the best of times.

At least, Rodney finds it uncomfortable, even if no one else does. It's like watching someone slowly kill themself, one bloody inch at a time. It reminds him a little bit of his mother, at least as she'd been like before Jeannie had been born. (What she was like after doesn't bear repeating and he takes a long drought at the memory.)

"Oh, no. I'm having a wonderful time," she says brightly, either not noticing or choosing to ignore his obvious discomfort. "It didn't look like you were, though, so I thought I'd try to help."

"Unless you've got a way of speeding up time so that it's tomorrow already, I don't think there's much you can do. Though, you know," he adds somewhat awkwardly, gesturing with what remains of his drink, "thanks."

She continues to smile innocuously. He's not drunk enough for it not to annoy him, so he empties the glass in the hopes it will be enough. "Ah, but it's fun, Doctor McKay. Everything's so fancy and there're all sorts of neat food from all over the galaxy. It's like something you'd see on TV, only better."

"It's a whole lot of bother, that's what it is."

"I don't know about that. You know what they say: work hard, play hard."

"This isn't play," he says disgustedly. "This is torture."

"I'm sure Sheppard won't mind if you want to leave early."

Rodney snorts. "Are you kidding me? John snuck out hours ago."


	25. No Worse Heresy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.  
> Lord Acton  
> \- - -  
> right before part 4 of "Ascensiones" in the AJ 'Verse; passing familiarity with SGU  
> I've officially decided this doesn't fit in the next chappie, but it is kinda important, so...

19 March, 2007 / IXX Mai. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

Iohannes is beginning to understand how his superiors must have felt Before, when he was just a young lictor assigned to the Tethys, all brash and bold and without any brass to back it up.

It is exceedingly obvious that Gunnery Sergeant Greer excels at what he does – is exceptional, even, to have been assigned his own team by the Second Expedition, though only a non-commissioned officer. But it's just as obvious his respect for authority only extends so far as it takes not to get him chaptered out, and that even so it's a close call. Respect must be earned, as far as Greer seems to be concerned, not mindlessly granted because of rank or position.

Iohannes would agree with this sentiment, only he and his new breed of Lanteans plainly seemed to have earned the opposite. Why, Iohannes cannot say, though he can hazard a hundred guesses, all of them equally stupid and valid in the eyes of the new Terran Expedition.

He shares a quick look of frustration with Lorne before turning towards the gunnery sergeant and asking, quite plainly, "Do you know who I am? What I am?"

"You look like a traitor to me."

From the corner of his eye, Iohannes can see Lorne (who actually prefers Argathelianus these days, having seemingly severed all ties with Terra after the Air Force dropped him from the rolls and whispered promises of a court martial should he attempt to return) rapidly clench and unclench his fists, though wisely he does not move for his weapon. Iohannes may not care for the gunny's words, but Argathelianus takes them much more personally. It is both curious and endearing, though Iohannes wisely would never admit such, and it almost makes him wish that he'd listened to Nicolaa when she'd begged him for a child, if only for a chance to have a son in something more than name.

But only almost. There's no place for children in a war, not then and not now. Even if he'd for some reason chosen to bring a child into this galaxy so full of death and destruction, his son or daughter would have been ripped from him as assuredly as the rest of his kind had. Of that, he is sure.

"A traitor to who?" he asks calmly. "Terra? I never set foot there until two years ago. And let me tell you, what I saw didn't inspire all that much loyalty."

"You turned against your own people," Greer upbraids him, as if Iohannes were one of his privates rather than his praetor, his prefectus, his imperator. "You murdered hundreds of them for no cause beyond putting a crown on your head. That's all I need to know."

"That's war."

"That's not war as I know it. Sir," Greer tacks on, the addition almost more insolent than its absence would have been.

Yes, he thinks. Greer could have been him, Before, when everything had seemed so easy and the Wraith were the only enemy he ever thought to consider. Things had been so black and white then, so easy in their rights and wrongs. Yet surely there had been snakes in the grass back then just as surely as there are now. He just hadn't seen them.

"Yet we're winning."

"Funny way of winning."

"I don't have to explain myself to you."

"Maybe not, but the fact that you won't says it all, really."

Major Teldy choses that moment to intercede, armed with the kind of wrath only a displeased Marine Corps officer can draw, "I think we've all wandered away from the facts here. Which is that you were contemptuous of three officials of an allied government, two of whom are also your superior officers, and instigated a fight. Regardless of your personal feelings towards the men involved, those are still punishable offences under the UCMJ and Lord Iohannes is the closest thing to office hours you're going to find for three million light years."

"He's an alien," Sergeant Herrera says brusquely, speaking up for the first time since Iohannes entered the ward where Keller is patching up the Marines. He has a couple of cuts on his face from Nelson's ring, as do they all, and the corporal is sporting the start of a nasty bruise, but otherwise the Terrans came out far better than their opponents.

"Newsflash, Marine: I was born on this planet, you weren't. That makes you the alien here."

"Fuck semantics," Greer interrupts, drawing his attention – and his ire – back onto himself. "All I know is you're an Ascended Ancient. I don't care if that makes you god himself or the devil in fancy white robes, you there's no way you can tell me that whatever's going on inside your head is anything a human being can understand. You don't think the way we do. You don't feel the way we do. So I sure as hell don't want to see what your kind considers fair treatment for somebody who's only saying what everyone else is too afraid to. Which is that there is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

Iohannes is startled out of replying by Argathelianus' sharp, surprised laugh.

"Icarus is the most human sentient being you'll ever meet," he tells the gunnery sergeant, so completely sure that what he's saying is truth that Iohannes almost believes it himself, "and about the farthest thing from an Ori you could ever imagine. So if you're hoping Telford or Kavanagh will go easier on you just 'cause they're Terran, you've got it wrong.

"So," Argathelianus continues, the better part of his earlier ire gone but not forgotten, "since confining you is more trouble than it's worth and forfeiting your pay is meaningless in Pegasus, I think reassignment is the best course of action. Don't you agree, Icarus?"

Personally, Iohannes would rather ship them all back to Terra. When he'd invited the Terrans back to the city, he'd expected them to send back the members of the original Expedition who hadn't fought quite as hard as his Émigrés to stay – and they had, to some degree. But there are too many new faces. Too many people too fresh from a war with the Haeretici to see the difference between him and their enemies.

He's saved from responding when his radio crackles to life. He's actually relieved until he hears Rodney's voice shake over the crack and pop of static that the Terrans have told him cannot be helped on a party line, small and thin enough that Iohannes mind immediately goes back to Kolya and the Storm.

"Medical emergency," Rodney breathes raggedly. "T-t-tower One. L-l-level Three. Sec- Section Six."


	26. The Only Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?''  
> That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”   
> ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones  
> \- - -   
> immediately after the last  
> Writing is hard. My story-arc for this one isn't going as planed. Writing is hard.

19 March, 2007 / IXX Mai. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

It was so easy to be brave, Before. The only thing he had to lose back then had been his life and what was that compared to the chance that Atlantis would be able to stand for a day – an hour – a minute more? She had done so much for him, though she would deny it all in all but her most petulant moments. His life was so little compared to everything she was, everything she would be. The consequences of her Fall would be beyond imagining, while his own death would have been such a little thing in the balance.

But now…

He would still die for Atlantis. He would still give up his life for any member of the Expedition, old or new, if that would insure their safety. That hasn't changed.

What has changed is the fact that he cannot die. He can never die, not until the others release him from his punishment. Until then he has no choice but to carry on, watching helplessly as everyone he loves dies, again and again and again, until the only thing he knows is death and loss and pain.

And he has so much to lose now: His city. His worshipers. His son. His crown.

Rodney.

Losing Rodney terrifies him most of all. Rodney has been at the heart of every decision he was made since the moment his amator found him in the cathedra so long ago. Who he is, what he is, what he's willing to do – there is no aspect of his new life that Rodney has not had a part in. Iohannes isn't sure he wants to know what he'll become without him.

Oh, he'll survive Rodney's death. He somehow managed to survive the extinction of his race. He's sure he can do it again, if he has to. Survival is his best – and maybe only – skill. But he cannot speak as to the kind of man he'll be at the end of it. Even the mere idea of Rodney dying fills him with a white-hot anger that he doesn't care to examine too closely, for fear of what he'll find. The actuality only promises to be worse.

It's this fear that has him flickering to Rodney's side before the words medical emergency are fully spoken, without thought of the consequences.

It's this fear that has him falling to his knees beside his amator's sprawled body, hands aglow, without taking note of the scene around him.

It's this fear that turns his blood to ice when Rodney protests weakly, "No, stop," when Iohannes' hand touches his shoulder and attempts to shrug him off.

"Rodney," he entreats, removing his hand – and his healing power – with great reluctance. "It's me. It's Iohannes – it's John," he corrects hastily, not willing to trust Rodney's life to his reasoning abilities when he's four-fifths of the way to unconsciousness on the floor. "I just wanna help you, okay? Let me help you, please."

It is a minor lifetime before Rodney manages to breathe, "John?" eyelids fluttering but far from opening.

"Yeah, buddy. I'm here."

"Please."

Not trusting his voice, Iohannes takes that as leave to do what he can to fix whatever it is that has Rodney all but passed out on the floor, not a hundred yards from where the party celebrating the coronation he neither wanted or required is still raging. Although he is expecting to find something catastrophic – poison, perhaps, or inflammation of some critical organ, or even an allergic reaction, – what he finds is a great deal of alcohol and a few bruises. Both of which are worrisome, yes, but neither constitute a medical emergency by any means. As relieved as Iohannes is, it doesn't make any sense.

"What happened?" Rodney asks tiredly moment later. He takes a long moment to decide that, yes, he wants to take the weight off the arm trapped beneath him and roll onto his back.

"I dunno. I was hoping you'd tell me."

"I'm not- It's all kind of a blur, really," he says, struggling to sit up. "I was, er, talking with Allina and then…" He makes a vague motion with the hand he's not using to push himself up with, which Iohannes then grabs and uses to haul Rodney to his feet.

"Allina?"

Which is, naturally, when Carson and his team of scarily competent nurses come pouring out of the vectura, half-a-dozen medical bags and a back brace between them. After the most cursory of looks, they turn their attentions to the other person in the hall, the one Iohannes has somehow managed to miss in his panic to get to Rodney, despite the blood flowing freely the back of her head. The plaster is cracked above her, dented with an impression of her body that goes almost all the way down to the superconductive lining deep inside. Yet more blood stains the wall, slowly dripping to the floor, and when the medics take her away, he sees hairline fractures in the flooring beneath the puddle that had formed underneath her.

This isn't how it was supposed to go at all.


	27. Risen Apes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses."
> 
> Robert Ardrey, African Genesis  
> \- - -  
> Anytime really, but probably in S3

Sometimes he wonders how John managed to turn out so different from the others, to be able to see humans as anything other than pretentious apes at all, let alone love one.

But John is smart, far smarter than he likes to pretend. He had to have realized early on that the Ancients were risen apes, just like everybody else. The only thing that made them special was the fact they'd risen a bit earlier on than anyone else, and that was an accident of biology and cosmology as much as anything else. A worthless difference, really, in the grand scheme of mice and men.

He wonders if this is where John got the idea that he was worthless too.


	28. Still Breathing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It's decidedly bizzare, when the Worst Thing happens and you find yourself still conscious, still breathing.”
> 
> Elisa Albert, The Book of Dahlia  
> \- - -  
> Right before part 6 of "Ascensiones"

His breath is entirely outside his control now.

So are his heartbeat and the myriad other autonomic functions that were once centred in his medulla oblongata. The device nestled between his C2 and C3 vertebrae, the one John calls satanas – deceiver – for reasons that he's not bothered to explain to anyone, outsourced them to Atlantis and her data processors long ago. But the important part is that Rodney's breath is entirely outside of his control now.

So how the hell is he supposed to focus onhis breathing?

The air is moving through his lungs with a pattern that, while predictable, is just slightly off and definitely not something he would have chosen for himself, if he'd ever given his lungs much thought beyond the occasional appreciation for not trying to asphyxiate him after a brush with citrus. He can't focus on his breathing without remembering that somebody else is controlling his breathing, that somebody else is keeping him alive, that his life is in somebody else's hands. It doesn't matter that that somebody is 'Lantis, who he can trust when he can't even trust John: his life is his and nobody but him should be controlling any part of it.

Rodney usually works himself into a panic at this train of thought, ruining any and all attempts at meditation for hours after.

But not this time. This time there are drugs enough in his system to keep his concentration on his breath and not the otherworldly power running it, for all the good it does. For though it remains in his power to relax his limbs and calm his mind, Rodney finds that he can do neither. The pain is too great for him to push it entirely from his mind.

So he concentrates on his breathing.


	29. Godlike Crime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Thy Godlike crime was to be kind."
> 
> Lord Bryon, "Prometheus"  
> \- - -   
> before part 6 of "Ascensiones"

Prometheus stole fire from the heavens, damning himself to an eternity of having his liver pecked out by the eagle Aethon at Zeus' command – or Jupiter's, if one felt a particularly Roman bent. On Earth, in certain traditions, he is a symbol of human striving and the unintended consequences of scientific advancement.

But Prometheus never invented the flames that he stole. The ancient Greeks attributed that honour to Hermes – known to the Romans as Mercury, - which made it fitting that the SGC chose to name their first X-303 after him. So very little of what went into that battleship was of Tau'ri invention. Most of it had been taken, more or less directly, from goa'uld designs, which had in turn been cribbed from Ancient ruins. Like the titan, both species were intellectual thieves, standing on the shoulders of giants while boasting how high they'd climbed.

Daedalus was the true innovator of the ancient world. Held to be the son of Athena – Minerva to the Roman world, – his creations numbered in the thousands, from the banal to the great, from the discovery of isinglass for the clarification of wine to the construction of the Labyrinth of Crete to hold Pasiphaë's son, the Minotaur.

So too he did invent the wax wings that he and his son used to escape from captivity. But it is Icarus who is remembered for that feat, for flying too close to the sun, for having too great ambition – at least in Terran tradition.

It is Daedalus who had too much ambition, however. He was too blinded by his past successes, many as they were, to truly see the dangers of his latest invention. If Icarus flew too high, it was his father's fault for not impressing upon him the risk.

Because there is always a risk.


	30. Major Problems

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
> 
> Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

15 May, 2007 / XXX Iun. a.f.c. I – HWS Headquarters, Terra, Avalon

Jack calls it The Pillbox. The official name for the complex is: The Dag Hammarskjöld Centre for Universal Peace and Security, which had gone up with minimal controversy and remarkable alacrity on the corner of 5th and 97th on Manhattan's Upper East Side, but Jack calls it The Pillbox, as does almost everyone who knows the building's actual purpose. Which is to be not, as the announcements claimed, an extension for the United Nation's Office for Outer Space Affairs, but rather the headquarters of Homeworld Command, which had been secunded in recent months from a cabinet-level position in the United States government to a United Nations programme they would deny with all the strength of their PR department until the Stargate Program was made public.

It's all very confusing and political. Sam remembers precisely none of it, most likely because the last time Daniel tried to explain it to her Jake had been busy proving that child-proof anything was nothing more than a cruel and elaborate joke perpetuated by the entirety of modern civilization upon poor, unsuspecting first-time parents like herself. As long as the job gets done, it matters very little who actually sits at the top of the totem pole, the American president or the UN Secretary-General. Jack is in charge of most of the day-to-day operations and there's a committee that deals with most the long-term things, and all in all it means very little has changed.


	31. The Thing We Need Most

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” 
> 
> Philip Pullman  
> \- - -  
> This was going to start part 3. And then I realized it was basically a recap of everything that came in parts 1 and 2. And, while I liked it, we did not need 700 words of recap. The story at the end is actually a slightly repurposed summary of the original series I was working on once, long ago....

18 May, 2007 / XXXI Iun. a.f.c. I – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus

Long after he's stumbled back to his quarters, the smallest hours of the night giving way to the suggestion of morning, Evan lays in his bed, unable to sleep. He's stupidly tired, his body heavy with exhaustion and alcohol, but his mind is racing. He should sleep – he needs to sleep. There are a thousand things that must be done between dawn and dusk, and sunrise is approaching with a creeping, relentless certainty that makes the minutes appear to fly.

Evan knows this, but knowledge no more makes sleep come than it does anything else.

How did it get so complicated?

He joined the Air Force out of the desperate, gnawing need to do something with his life, something meaningful, purposeful, worthwhile. To that end, traded his life to the service, and yet the moment the going got rough, the service abandoned him, leaving him on Atlantis and calling him a traitor for it.

He knows it's not their fault, not entirely. Icarus did nothing short of move mountains to keep him in the city and, in the end, it was Evan's choice to put on a different uniform and rescue the Émigrés. Perhaps his actions can rightly be called desertion, but the circumstances are so mitigating that few would dare unless they had something to gain by doing so.

The Air Force has done just that, stripping him of everything he was before Atlantis, and the only thing they have to gain is a war with his new home, because if they can win Atlantis, they will have won all the collected knowledge and wisdom – and destructive capabilities – of the greatest race ever to travel the stars. They have to know they cannot win, but men have always done strange things for power, and the idea of a weapon like an Ancient city-ship in any hands but their own has to rub some people back on Earth the wrong way.

The last thing Evan wants is a war. Sometimes, he can almost convince himself that nobody else wants one either. Colonel Carter certainly doesn't. But Colonel Carter does see something in Icarus to fear, something terrible enough to risk Earth's newfound peace to defend against.

Colonel Carter is not a woman who fears easily.

But what is there to fear?

That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, the one that his mind turns over as sleep evades him. Presumably the answer is on the USB drive Carter had given him, but won't know until he gets Radek to open it on a non-networked computer, taking every safety protocol they can he of and making up a few just for the occasion. And that will have to wait for morning.

/Go to sleep, pastor,/ Rory orders cheerily, in the manner of a child who has been allowed to stay up late. Though time has rounded out the sharp edges of her words, she is still very much a child, and like all children who have aged even a little, she feels herself greatly grown. It is with this youthful air of authority she continues, /You have much to do today. You will do none of it well if you are not rested./

"I'm too tired to sleep," he tells her.

Rory pauses as if to consider this. /That makes no sense. If you are tired, you sleep. If you are not tired, you do not. It does not work the other way around./

"I never said it made sense."

/Mater says she used to tell Pater stories when he was young./

The thought makes Evan smile. He can almost imagine the scene: a young Sheppard sprawled out on the floor of one of the hidden refuges he used to keep across the city, which teams exploring the less used piers still sometimes stumble across, listening to words only he can hear. But only almost. He can no more imagine Icarus as a child than he can imagine Icarus having a childhood.

"What kinds of stories?"

/Long, long ago, in the days when the lost world of Loegria was still blue with untainted oceans and the great nations of Cambria and Cornubia had yet to destroy themselves with greed and avarice, ten gods ruled. Often, they fought amongst themselves, their wars stretching across years and lands, and it was into the aftermath of one of their bloodiest wars that a daughter was born to Death…/

Evan doesn't mean to fall sleep, but sleep Evan does, lulled by the sound of Aurora's voice and the quiet, soothing lullaby she sings.


	32. Pale Blue Dot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
> 
> Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot  
> \- - -  
> So, it seems I'm unable to write anything not "heavy" lately. And as much as I love this - I wrote it across 2 notebooks and on my evil phone's evil screen yesterday, that's how much I needed to get it down - I don't think it's appropriate as the beginning to the S3 finale. Too heavy, maybe? I really don't know, but I adore this, so... It works as a really good prequel, I think. Very prequel.

When Iohannes is ten years old, he sees the sunrise for the first time. Created as he edged his jumper closer and closer to the cold, inky void that cradled his world, it was the most amazing sight he had ever seen. The pale blue sky purpled as he rose then blackened completely, until his universe was nothing but darkness for a handful of terrible seconds before his orbit brought the sun hurtling over the arc of the world below.

For ten years, that world – indeed, that city, not even visible behind him – was the only thing he'd ever known. He had not even seen the sky until scant seconds before his ascent had delivered him into darkness.

Looking down on his world, it was difficult to see it as anything other than a gravity well – something to be fought against and overcome, but something requiring protection as well. Lantea was only the most recent world his people had settled on (back then, Tirianus still stood, and even Terra was a not-so-distant memory) but it was the only planet Iohannes had ever known.

It was home.

He remembers thinking it strange that a world his people had occupied for scarcely a hundred years could be home. It was such a small stage in the cosmic arena, utterly insignificant except in that it had been chosen to be the caravanserai of one of the great Alteran urbes-naves for a time – nothing but another stopover on their seventy million year journey across the stars. Any number of worlds could have chosen in its stead. Any number of worlds could replace it in the future.

And yet how much blood had been spilt over it? How many lives in Iohannes' lifetime had been lost in its defense?

Hundreds?

Thousands?

Tens of thousands?

All that blood couldn't add up to the worth of one little world. The only way it could possibly counterbalance was if the stakes were higher than Lantea alone. Maybe if all the habitable worlds were held in balance, it could all even out. Maybe it would take the entire galaxy before the scales began to shift towards something more reasonable.

Maybe it would take the universe itself.


	33. Time - April 17, 2006

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I genuinely don't know who to blame for this one. Or, maybe I shouldn't bring my (Adobe Suite equipped) work computer home with me.... 
> 
> The text for the "cover article" follows.

 

* * *

 

It's official. After 147 years, the Riemann Hypothesis has been proved.

This might not mean much to you or I, but it's a source of jubilation for mathematicians around the world. It's a problem that's been plaguing the greatest minds in modern history for years – and its been solved by a United States Air Force lieutenant colonel stationed in Afghanistan.

If I sound dubious, it's because I was – because I still am, really. Information is hard on the ground about Lt Col John Sheppard. I can tell you he was born 14 June, 1970 in Sausalito, California. At some point he went to Stanford, earning a bachelor's in mathematics in December of 1991 and a PhD in theoretical mathematics in May 1994. Upon graduation, he was snapped up by the Air Force and no one has seen him since.

At least, not anyone in the mathematics world. His thesis advisor, Dr Daniel Bump, was unusually tight-lipped about his former student, and even getting a hold of a copy of his doctoral thesis – an unusually accessible work on analytical number theory that actually made for a delightful Saturday night read – was a Sisyphean task. All of Sheppard's subsequent papers have published by the USAF publishing directorate and a great many of them are stamped  _Top Secret_.

It's enough to make a person wonder if this Sheppard character actually exists. Repeated calls to the public affairs office of his duty station have been largely ignored. Nearly all of the available information about the lieutenant colonel has come in pre-prepared briefing packets handed out by media liaisons during official briefings, squeezed in between announcements on training accidents and roadside bombings. If anyone has seen John Sheppard in public since the publication of his ground-breaking paper,  _On the Distribution of Primes in Riemann Zeta Functions_ , they're not talking.

Which leaves your author with a conundrum. Assigned to write on article on a man who is destined to have his name go down in history between Euler, Euclid, and Einstein  _how am I to fill two-and-a-half pages_?

I'm half-tempted to say Sheppard is a cypher, designed to throw us off the trail – but off the trail of what and, if he is, wouldn't he be more active in the media? One of those liaisons passing out packets at the last official briefing I attended – announcing the publication of three more papers by the lieutenant colonel, to come out in the next few weeks – admitted that her office had been fielding calls from every talk show, newspaper, and magazine with an office budget large enough to afford the phone bill.

If Sheppard's not a cypher, he must be a recluse, as much as anyone serving in the armed forces in an active war zone can be considered a recluse. He can and does answer questions submitted to him – but only via email, and even then with significant delays. This writer's queries, sent back in January following the initial publication of his formula, before the Clay Mathematics Institute and dozens of mathematicians worldwide had verified the proof, were met with candid, if brief, answers.

And I mean  _brief_  and  _candid_. For example, my question of how he'd arrived at the idea for his solution received the single sentence answer:  _"It gets boring during debriefings_."

Still, despite his somewhat antisocial tendencies, it's fast becoming clear that Lt Col Sheppard is poised to be the next rock star of the mathematical world. His image, disseminated as it is by his battalion headquarters, is impossible to escape. Of the few direct quotations the public has been given, at least three have already made their way onto t-shirts. And let's not forget that online polls have recently named him  _The Sexiest Math in Science_ , which, while perhaps taking a liberal definition of the word _science_ , is astounding considering we've not even a soundbite from the man.

I suppose that makes the question  _Who is John Sheppard_  irrelevant. The better question is  _What's next_?


	34. Wired - January 2007

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no one to blame for this one. Just be glad I haven't gotten to the point in the series where I could do a whole bunch of these. And I spent far too much time on the attached article. (facepalm)

[ ](http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/aadarshinah/media/WiredCover1_zpsb9838124.jpg.html)

 

 

One year ago, nobody had ever heard of John Sheppard, the somewhat reclusive United States Air Force officer who dabbled in mathematics in between sorties in Afghanistan.

Today, there's hardly a school child that doesn't know his name.

On the surface of things, Sheppard is the last person anyone would think might solve a question that's been plaguing the best minds in mathematics for the last hundred and fifty years. While he does hold a doctorate in theoretical mathematics from Stanford (1994), following graduation he chose to join the military as a pilot rather than seek an academic positing more suited to his interests, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He has continued to publish during this time; the majority of his articles – the ones the Air Force has seen fit to declassify – have been related to Diophantine geometry and fluid dynamics rather than the more obscure analytic number theory to which the Riemann Hypothesis belongs.

But perhaps that only makes sense. Bernhard Riemann, for whom the hypothesis is named, was something of a loner himself. He hardly ever appeared in public, had few close friends, and lived in fear of lecturing. The only contemporary memoir ever written about him is a whopping seventeen pages long and reveals little beyond Riemann's pious Lutheran habits and his (somewhat justifiable) hypochondria.

Lt Col Sheppard's reclusively, however, seems to be more of a product of duty than fear. Indeed, he cancelled his appearance at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union in Madrid last month rather than leave his duty station. Jeanne Miller, a family friend, accepted his Fields Medal – the highest honour in mathematics, comparable to a Nobel Prize – on his behalf, in a moving speech that went viral before the ceremony was even over. She is expected to do the same for his Abel Prize in Oslo later this month.

I sat down with Mrs Miller in her home in suburban Vancouver shortly before Christmas in an attempt to learn more about Lt Col Sheppard.

* * *

"Sorry for the mess," Mrs Miller says as she shows me to the living room. I expect her to be talking about holiday decorations. She's not: the far wall of the living room is lined, floor to ceiling, with newsprint. The lower half of this is covering in childish finger paintings. The top is covered in mathematical equations. "I was working and lost track of time."

"Are you a mathematician too, Mrs Miller?"

She laughs – and instructs me to call her Jeannie. "No, stay-at-home mom. But I dabble when I can. My speciality is in field theory."

"Is that how you met Lt Col Sheppard?"

She laughs more brightly this time, actually taking a minute to catch her breath. "No. God, no. My brother introduced us. They've known each other since Stanford, or something. Mer," – Dr M. Rodney McKay, astrophysics (CalTech 1988), mechanical engineering (Stanford 1991), who has published three papers with Sheppard over the last six months – "was working on his second PhD while John was an undergraduate there. They work together now."

"In the Air Force?"

"Mer's been consulting for them since I was in secondary school."

"That sounds like quite a story."

"I'm sure it is."

She glances towards a framed picture on the end table. In it, Lt Col Sheppard is carrying a young blonde girl of about four or five on his shoulders, laughing a man whose face is in profile but can only be Jeannie's brother. It is very easy to get the impression that Sheppard and her brother are far more than just colleagues and old college buddies.

"So what can you tell me about Lt Col Sheppard?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Any clue as to why he avoids media attention?"

"He's a private man. Winning the war is very important to him."

This is the canned answer I've heard from every public relations officer I've asked over the past few months. Granted, it's phrased a little bit differently, but the end result is the same. "I understand wanting to stay at his post, but he won't even do phone interviews. To get a quote from him, you have to submit your question by email three months before you want to go to print."

"He's a busy man. It's crazy over there like you wouldn't believe. A lot of time, dealing with emails is about the last thing on his list. He's gotten better about it recently, but if you want I can get on his case about it."

I agree, mostly for my editor's sake, and move on. "Any chance you can explain to me what all the uproar is about? I've been told the Riemann Hypothesis is a huge deal, but I'm afraid I don't really understand it – or Lt Col Sheppard's solution."

* * *

The Riemann Hypothesis, as Jeannie explained it to me, goes something like this:

_All non-trivial zeroes of the zeta function have real part one half._

The history of the problem goes all the way back to Euler, who did a lot of work with infinite series. One of these infinite series, known these days as Riemann zeta function,  _n^-s_ , was found to add up to a specific number  _if and only if_ s _is an even number_. For instance, when  _s_  is equal to two, the sum is equal to π^2/6. When  _s_  is four, the sum is π^4/90, and so on. These are called  _trivial zeroes_ , mostly because they don't mean much to the mathematicians.

Things get a little more complicated – and interesting – with odd values of  _s_. These values are all made up of two parts. One is real, equalling ½, the other is imaginary, with a value of  _it_. This has proven true as far as anyone has been able to calculate it, but it's been almost impossible to prove.

Until now. Sheppard's proof provides an elegant solution to calculating the imaginary parts of non-trivial zeroes previously beyond our reach as well as providing irrefutable proof that no non-trivial zero can exist  _without_  a whole part of one-half. I won't go into it here – it's far less simple than  _E=mc^2_ , but has still been appearing on t-shirts on university campuses around the world – but it has broad reaching implications for modern civilization.

* * *

For instance, prime numbers up to now have been calculated by dividing a number by every number from two up all the way to its square root. If it divides evenly into any of those, it's not prime. If none of those values divide evenly, it's prime. Anyone can now calculate any prime number they want, provided they have entered the equation correctly into their computer and have a decent amount of RAM.

Which is a problem, as prime numbers make up the basis for almost all of our Internet security protocols. Use an encryption made up of a series of prime numbers and a hacker will find other ways to decrypt your information – ways that can be defeated by keeping passwords secret and shredding important documents when finished with them. Now any hacker with a decent computer can calculate a decryption key access your bank account or credit card without having to know a thing about you, and can steal from every one else using that bank at the same time.

We're already starting to see the effects. In mid-October, a person known only as  _Shadow Hat_  was able to hack into the three largest banks in Nigeria's capitol, Abuja, and transfer almost three-and-a-quarter million dollars into untraceable offshore accounts before the security breech was discovered. On Thanksgiving Day, multiple credit unions across the southern United States reported – as yet unsuccessful – attempts to enter their computer systems.

I spoke with Diane Anderson, Chief Security Officer for JPMorgan Chase at their corporate headquarters in New York City about what they are doing to protect their customers from the threat hackers armed with Sheppard's revolutionary equation. She didn't go into detail for obvious reasons, but she did mention one thing I found worth sharing – that they are working with outside contractors, including consultants for the US armed forces, to develop new encryption technologies not based off of prime numbers. The man behind their most promising avenue of research? Dr M. Rodney McKay.

* * *

A permanent solution to the problems posed by Lt Col Sheppard's equation is not in sight. It is almost certain that more hackers will find better, more efficient ways to make use of this knowledge before such a solution can be found. In our modern age, we are reliant upon computers. They are our greatest strength and greatest weakness. Even as Sheppard's Solution is opening the doors to our greatest secrets, it is also opening the secrets to the stars, with dozens of scientific and military uses already having been announced from all corners of the world.

I asked Jeannie what Sheppard thought of all this. "John doesn't really understand money," she told me with a laugh. "The idea that anyone would want to steal anyone else's doesn't really add up for him."

"He sounds like an interesting person, Lt Col Sheppard."

"He is. He's… not quite like anyone else you'll meet, that's for sure."

I guess we'll just have to wait to meet Lt Col Sheppard and see.


	35. The Atlantic - May 2007

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I intended to do this all up in InDesign and make it look like a real magazine article (thus the extra images, attached at bottom), I couldn't get the font to match what they really use and... I mostly got tired of messing with it after a while and decided to post anyway with what I had. This is probably the last of this type of drabble until I get to Earth again in the series. 
> 
> This is among the articles discovered by Rodney and Radek on Sam's thumb drive in "Coniunix".

[ ](http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/aadarshinah/media/theAtlantic_zpsb7fe9baa.jpg.html)

 

 

"I just got off the phone with the Editor-in-Chief of  _Vanity Fair_ ," my editor tells me, popping into my office ten minutes before my interview is set to begin. "She confirmed that this is the first time that Sheppard has spoken with the press that anyone knows of. They've offered a quarter of my yearly salary if you can get him to answer one of their questions."

"What does  _Vanity Fair_  want with a mathematician?" I ask.

My editor rolls her eyes. "Have you seen him?" She holds out a folded sheet of memo paper. "I already took the liberty of accepting for you. Good luck. Godspeed. Get me the quotes."

And with that, she's gone

* * *

It's not like I live under a rock or anything. I am fully aware of the rock star mythos and mystery that has sprung up around United States Air Force officer Lt Col John Sheppard, the first person in one hundred and forty-seven years to find a solution to the infamous Riemann Hypothesis. I will even admit to a little bit of fangirling when I found out that I would get to be the one to do the first interview with him – although that was before I knew it would be a phone interview only.

The thing is, though, my article is supposed to be about education reform – specifically, the six elementary mathematics textbooks written by Lt Col Sheppard that are being released later this month which promise to revolutionize the way our children are taught basic math. I was a fourth grade teacher before I became a journalist – I want to know the theory behind Sheppard's educational philosophy and how it plans to make educator's jobs easier and what it will do to prepare our children for high school and college mathematics.

Instead, these important questions seem to have taken a back seat to John Sheppard himself – the man, the myth, the legend.

* * *

There are three questions on the memo sheet, written in my editor's quick hand but utterly in the voice of  _Vanity Fair_ 's Editor-in-Chief. They are:

  * _Why has he not appeared in public since the publication of his proof? Why did he suddenly cancel his appearance at the IMC in Madrid last December?_
  * _Why is there almost no record of Sheppard between his birth and his enrolment in Stanford_ (c. 1970 – 1988) _? Why are all records following his commission in the Air Force sealed from the public or else heavily redacted? Why do certain persons who were doctoral candidates at Stanford concurrently_ (R. Neel, J. Chen, J. Coleridge)  _deny ever having known Sheppard, while others_ (J. Victor, M. Xu, S. Coombs) _, all with ties to the military, confirm it?_
  * _What is the nature of his relationship with M. Rodney McKay?_



Admittedly, the first one was already on my list. I don't think there's a person out there who doesn't want to know why Sheppard, who could be raking in money far in excess of the CMI's one million dollar prize through lecture, interview, and royalty fees, hasn't been seen in public since at least January 2006. Not to mention the fact that this interview will be the first time anyone in the press has  _spoken_  with the man by anything other then severely time-lagged emails in the same amount of time.

The second one is a little more interesting – I'd not heard that there were any  _mathematicians_ denying Sheppard's existence. Oh, there have always been those who thought that the lieutenant colonel is a cypher for someone – or something – else, but, by the large, they tend to overlap with the moon landing deniers and members of the anti-vaccination movement, and so I'd given them no real credence before. But if we're talking about Stanford-educated mathematicians who would have been doctoral candidates with Sheppard – taking the same classes, grading the same papers; drinking at the same bars, - well I don't know quite what to make of that.

And then the last: What _is_ the nature of his relationship with M. Rodney McKay? Only seven of Sheppard's papers from the last fifteen years list collaborators, and McKay's name is on all of these. McKay's own sister, Jeanne Miller, who accepted both his Fields and Abel Medals on Sheppard's behalf, has stated that the two are, " _very close._ " And yet-

And yet we still live in a time where gays and lesbians are forbidden from serving in our armed forces. If that happens to be the case with Lt Col Sheppard, as all the rumours seem to suggest, the last thing I want is to print something that costs him the job he appears to love so much.

I'm definitely going to ask him the first two, but what about the third? Sheppard's a public figure these days. He's only managed to stay as anonymous as he is by virtue of the fact that even paparazzi are hesitant to head into the Korengal Valley for a story. And he can always choose not to answer the question – but do I have any right even to ask it? Regardless of whatever sexuality he may or may not have, that is Sheppard's business and Sheppard's alone. No one's sex life is meant to be headline fodder.

I still haven't decided when the phone rings.

* * *

"Hello?"

"Anne Angulo?" a man's voice asks. Summers spent in San Francisco with my grandparents are enough to tell me this is a native speaker of the particular brand of English spoken there.

"Speaking."

"Oh good," the man says, a relieved note in his voice, "I thought I might have the wrong extension again. This is Colonel Sheppard. We had an interview scheduled?"

"Yes," I tell him. "And let me just begin my telling you what an honour it is to be the first to be allowed to interview you in person."

Sheppard snorts. "Don't thank me. I wanted to do this. I'd have done it earlier if the public relations people would have let me. Just between you and me," he adds, somewhat conspiratorially, "they don't know I'm giving this interview yet. They'll find out soon enough, but until then…"

I'm not sure how to take this information, so I delve right in. "Why don't you start by telling me a little about what inspired you to write elementary school math textbooks? Looking over the titles of your other published materials, it seems a little out of your comfort zone."

"Would you believe I was bored?"

"Not really, no."

"Well, that was part of it. But mostly I was looking for a good way to teach math to the folks over here and couldn't find a good way to go about it – not with the books we had, anyway. It seemed to me like the textbooks were focusing on the wrong things at the wrong times and not introducing some ideas early enough. Everyone seems focused on raising the difficulty of maths children are taught at each age without ensuring that the foundations are adequately understood."

It's true, too. More and more students are studying calculus in honours and AP classes in high school, and yet when they struggle, it's often not the  _calculus_  that they have trouble with, but the  _algebra_  – a subject that many began studying before their freshmen year. For years, the impetus is not on our children's education, but on succeeding by the increasingly meaningless standards of end-of-year (EOD) and other standardized tests. (For more information, see "What Standardized Testing Actually Measures" on page 27).

"Your publisher sent me advance copies of your books,"  _Elementary Mathematics_ , published in six volumes and intended for first through sixth graders. "They are impressive works. The depth and breadth of each seems perfectly tailored to each age group – and yet I cannot help but notice that you start introducing algebraic ideas in  _Level 5_ , and that several ideas usually regulated to high school geometry and trigonometry start appearing in texts for ages groups as young as ten."

"Everything in math is related. If you teach children the proper methods, rather than hand-wave with formulas and drawings that explain nothing and employ no more skill than rote memorization to master, they will be richer for it."

"But with such notable differences from state-mandated curriculums, how do you hope to have schools purchase your books?"

"It's the curriculum that's wrong," Sheppard insists, an odd accent  _curriculum_  that credits some Latin tutor in his past greatly. One of my stipulations for publishing is that a full count of books is donated to the Vancouver Public School system. Once everyone sees what a success they are there, they'll start changing their  _curricula_ to fit."

"You seem awfully certain of this."

"I am."

I glance out the window. D.C. bustles below me. Dimly, on the other side of the line, I can hear the sound of traffic, the kind of which seems like it would be out of place on a military base in the middle of Afghani desert. As sorely tempted as I am to ask where he's calling from, I stay on topic – for the moment. "And yet you have none of the traditional qualifications of a textbooks author."

"Tradition is overrated," I can practically hear him shrug. "You want what's best for the students and what's best for the society you're pushing them out into. You create a workforce that doesn't understand the basic concepts of what you're trying to teach them and you're only hurting yourself and your future. If your traditions do nothing but hurt them, what good are they?"

"I think you may be overstating things-"

"Resting on your laurels is all well and good – as long as it's only a rest. If you don't keep climbing, you lose."

If Sheppard was genial at the beginning – a man I could easily imagine hitting the beach between classes while at Stanford, - this last comment drives home the military aspect of the lieutenant colonel that's easy to forget when you're talking about mathematical proofs and elementary school textbooks. This is a man who, in addition to the prestigious Fields and Abel Medals, has two purple hearts and a Defence Superior Service Medal – for  _superior meritorious service in a position of significant responsibility._

"I imagine that would have made for an interesting speech – even more interesting than the space-age take on Robert Ardrey's  _African Genesis_  given by your… sister-in-law?" I ask, daring. The speech Jeanne Miller,  _née_ McKay, made last December in Madrid while accepting the Fields Medal on Sheppard's behalf had gone viral, as had the conspiracy theories of just who she is to him.

Lt Col Sheppard just laughs, sounding suddenly warm, if not outright friendly, again. "Remind me to give you another interview someday," he says somewhat obliquely before the line goes dead.

* * *

I really did want to make this article about Sheppard's textbooks. They are remarkable things. If you ever have the chance, I recommend picking one up and flipping through it. Even a brief glance is enough to reveal that there's not a lot of  _if a train leaves Albuquerque_  type problems in them. Instead, there are the type of straight-forward problems children can relate to that slowly morph into the more complex concepts you might run across in real life. I'm not kidding when I say that the  _Elementary Mathematics_ series is a masterpiece, made all the more spectacular when you consider they were written by a man with no teaching experience while in the middle of an active warzone.

However they were written, I can guarantee they'll be replacing your children's textbooks sometime in the future – and comments from his publisher have indicated another series, designed for middle and high school students, is on its way. The future of mathematics education in North America is here – and we're no closer to knowing anything about the man behind it then we were before.

 

 

[](http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/aadarshinah/media/textbookCover_1_zpsefa26aff.jpg.html)  [](http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/aadarshinah/media/textbookCover_2_zps565a0be1.jpg.html)

[](http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/aadarshinah/media/textbookCover_5_zpsd1ff6326.jpg.html)  [](http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/aadarshinah/media/textbookCover_6_zps89cde97f.jpg.html)


	36. Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.” 
> 
> Abraham Lincoln  
> \- - -  
> This was going to be the next part of S4, but then I decided I didn't like it enough. Or something.

**11 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

He hadn’t heard the door chime, that much was obvious, though it was debatable how much anyone _could_ hear over the repetitive beep, clack, clatter, and hum of the various bits of medical technology working to keep Icarus alive.

Evan pauses for a minute in the doorway, taking in the scene:

Sheppard is an absolute wreck, pale against the white sheets of his hospital bed. There’s a tube down his throat to help him breathe, a needle in one wrist feeding him blood, a needle in the other wrist just plain feeding him, and no less than five titanium pins and half-a-hundred stiches holding various parts of him together, if he remembers correctly. Words like _medical separation_ and _have you considered becoming an organ donor_ would have been bandied about if Icarus were a) still considered a part of the Air Force in anything more than name, and b) not an Ancient and thus lacking in the sort of accelerated healing abilities that kept him from dying on the table as they’d all thought he would.

Still, as categorically awful as Sheppard looks, McKay looks a hundred times worse. If the man has eaten, slept, or even left this room since Sheppard entered it, it does not show. His clothes are the same ones he was wearing the day the Terran delegation came to discuss terms for the Expedition’s return to the city – he can tell, both by the stench and the bloodstains that cover it. If the obsession weren’t such a relief to see, Evan would find it more disturbing than he does, but as an obsessed McKay is a happy McKay, it’s a marked change from the past few weeks of listless abstraction they’d all been treated to while they’d believed Sheppard to be dead.

The way Evan sees it his adoptive parents’ relationship is built on a solid foundation of sarcasm, sleep deprivation, and suicide runs. If they can each get over their self-imposed guilt about the situation, they’ll come out of this stronger than ever. But _getting over it_ means Icarus has to wake up, and until such a time Rodney is going to do nothing but stew in his own juices and worry about how he could have prevented something none of them ever saw coming – particularly Rodney himself, as his memories of the events leading up to it had been repeatedly erased.

“When was the last time you slept?”

McKay is so tired he doesn’t even jump at his voice – unless he had heard the door open earlier and simply failed to acknowledge it. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”

Evan sighs and makes his way towards the chair on the opposite side of Icarus’ hospital bed. “Sleep is good for you, Pops. So is food and, astoundingly, bathing, though there’s only two hundred years of agreement in the medical community about that one, so I can understand how you might be sceptical.”

“Once upon a time, I actually thought you were one of those corn-fed, all-American, wholesome as mom and apple pie types,” McKay accuses, unwinding himself from his own chair. “I haven’t decided if it was all a charade or if Radek somehow managed to corrupt you.”

“I’m from San Francisco.”

“So? What does that have to do with price of tea in China?”

“It’s not exactly known for it’s corn,” he explains, leaning back in his chair with a smile that dies the moment he glances at the medical equipment keeping Icarus alive. “Any change?”

“He actually is getting better,” McKay admits, though all the air seems to leave him as he says it. “Carson’s actually taken him off the medicine keeping him sedated, so he can wake up whenever he wants, but… He coded three times on the operating table, Evan. There were so many holes in his lungs that no one’s quite sure how much oxygen his brain was getting even _after_ they put him on the respirator. No one is sure how much of _John_ is left, or which John it might be.”

“He used his dying breaths to tell you he was sorry. I think you know which John is in there.”

“That’s not-“ Rodney begins before cutting himself off. When he begins again a moment later, his tone is one that implies several deleterious comments about his intelligence, heritage, and choice of romantic partners will follow, “You may not have noticed while you were running around, pretending to be emperor, but John _wiped my memories_. He wiped them _three times_ – first when I protested his _killing_ of a hereto immortal being for me, again _the day before our wedding_ ; and once more while we were in our living room watching _Doctor Who_ because something reminded me of what he’d done and he wanted me to forget. He wasn’t under duress any one of those times. He knew what he was doing was wrong, he hid it from us for _months_ , but he kept on doing it and would have kept on doing it if the Replicators hadn’t decided to attack.”

“Maybe…”

“Maybe? What _maybe_ is there about it?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Did it hurt?” Rodney scoffs, crossing his arms and looking more like his old self than he has in ages.

“Pops, you know what they say: _Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely._ ”

Jabbing a finger his way, “If you came up here just to quote aphorisms at me, I will personally dial up Keras and let him know that you’re looking to adopt one of his brood.”

“If you wanted grandchildren so badly, you should’ve said something earlier, Pops. Would you be okay with the kid calling you _Pops_ too, or would you prefer something more traditional like _Grandfather_?”

“I hate you,” he says without any real heat, slumping back in his chair and looking for all the world like he just doesn’t have the mental withal to carry this conversation to it’s logical end. It’s entirely possible he doesn’t. He’s not sure either of his adoptive parents have ever talked about any sort of emotion outside a life-or-death situation. Discussing feelings with guns or explosions in the background might be impossible for them.

“No you don’t,” Evan says, not the least bothered by the rather sub-par glare Rodney attempts to send his way. “You hate yourself for not having seen this coming.”

“Shut up, Major.”

He presses on. “Everyone warned you that this day would come – Colonel Carter, Doctor Jackson, Cousin Helia, your own sister – and you laughed at them because you thought Icarus was too good a man to ever give in to _Haeresis_. We both did. We underestimated the danger and the entire galaxy almost paid for it.”

“I said shut up.”

“We have Icarus unlimited power. We put a crown on his head and worshippers at his feet. _We_ did that, you and me and Radek. That is what we’re responsible for.”

“I-“

“But,” Evan interrupts, “he made his own choices. Maybe we put him in a position where he _couldn’t_ make any other choice, but the choice was still his, and we’re not to blame for that. Sitting in here, killing yourself with grief, isn’t going to do anyone any good.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” McKay asks, partly petulant but mostly irate. “I’m supposed to be the smartest man in two galaxies and I couldn’t see what every Tom, Dick, and Harry knew was going on right under my nose.”

“Love makes us blind.”

“Again with the aphorisms.”

“What can I say?” he shrugs. “I like kids.”

Rodney rolls his eyes, but there’s a hint of a smile somewhere in his tired expression. “Why are you here, Evan?”

Why _is_ he here? He can’t honestly say. All be knows is that Radek has become distant since their arrival on this planet. Between Rodney’s all-consuming grief and their recent relocation, his own _amator_ had a ready excuse for why they can’t spare more than five minutes alone together. Evan had been willing to accept this at first – work always will come before everything else with them – but now that things have started to die down, Radek has continued to pull away. It’s as if seeing all the harm Rodney and Icarus are capable of causing each other has only encouraged Radek’s absurd idea that they shouldn’t let themselves become to close to each other. In fact, Evan’s almost certain that Radek is going to put an end to _any_ closeness before much longer.

It hurts.

It hurts and the only friend he has left in the universe – the only one with any hope of understanding any of it – is in a hospital bed hooked up to more medical equipment than Evan has ever seen in one place.

It hurts and it’s not just Radek doing it. The other Émigrés are distancing themselves from him too, though not so obviously. He’s in charge now, and god is it lonely at the top. How had Icarus stood it?

The answer, of course, is that he hadn’t. He’d gone mad and given in to the _Haeresis_ and put all of these problems on Evan’s shoulders and-

“I don’t know,” he admits. “You should go, get some sleep.”

“But-“

“I’ll sit here with him.”

The look McKay gives him is searching, clearly trying to find something in his expression that’s not there to be found, and eventually nods. “Radio me if something changes.”


	37. Terror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Do you know the terror of he who falls asleep? To his very toes he is terrified, because the ground gives way under him and the dream begins..."
> 
> Fredrick Nietzsche  
> \- - -  
> This was originally going to be the first of the "dream sequences" in "Vir." I didn't use it because I thought it was a little too prosaic for John to be thinking coming out of a coma, but I feel it gives a good insight to what's going on in his head pretty much most of the time.

**14 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

He's trapped in a nightmare from which he cannot wake.

He doesn’t understand – he won’t understand – he refuses to understand:

Life stems from one source. To be alive is to have affinity with everything that has ever lived. To draw breath is to call the trees one’s sisters. To bleed is to call all creatures great and small one’s brothers. Each earth is a mother to her children, each star a father. Each being bears kinship to every other.

So why, why, _why_ do they persist in carrying out such cruelties upon each other? What do gods matter when the blood that flows through their enemies’ veins may as well be their own? What difference does race or ethnicity make when ten or twenty or thirty generations back they were one people? What does any variation matter when underneath they are all just the same – different enough to be beautiful, unique, irreplaceable, yes, but similar enough that nothing could justify the _hate_ and _enmity_ and _torment_ they inflict upon each other.

Iohannes won’t say he doesn’t understand. He’s hated the Wraith since before he knew the meaning of the word. He’s killed more sentient beings than he would care to count, some of them in mercy, most of them in battle, a fair number of them in cold-blood. He’d given ten thousand years of his life to protect Atlantis, who may be stone and brick and mortar but was the only one who ever loved him before Rodney found him in the _cathedra_.

But what he doesn’t understand are the children.

Children are innocent. They aren’t like him. They didn’t climb into the _cathedra_ at six years old to strike down the armada that would have burned their world world. Their sins have yet to come, if ever they get the chance to sin at all.

So why, why, _why_ are they tortured? Why are they locked in the cold and the dark and left to sob late in the night, calling out for their _sweet, merciful god_ to save them? Why are they starved and beaten? Why are they raped and abused and left to die (or worse still, left to live and become as hard and cold and cruel as those who made them)? Why are they enchained and enslaved and left to toil and suffer in the sun and the snow and the dark of night? Why are they used as pawns in games they’ll never, ever understand? Why are they gathered like cattle and led to the slaughter for no fault other than having the wrong parents?

_The wind is cold, bitter. There is snow on the ground but the press of bodies is such that it’s almost warm enough to keep teeth from chattering._

_It’s impossible to see what’s happening. The crush of people keeps moving forward, too tightly packed for anyone to see anything but the head in front of them. But when they get to the front of the line, the children are taken from their parents, separated out along with the weak and the infirm and the undesired. They are goaded toward a separate building, the howl and shriek of the wind the only sound to be heard as they draw further and further from the rest of the camp. A dark, oily column of smoke rises from the back of the building. It must be warm inside-_

“No. Not the children _,_ ” he screams for all the good it will do him. “Anyone but the children, please.”

He feels hands on him, holding him back, pushing him down. Iohannes struggles, trying to fight them off, but cannot even see his attackers, his vision too filled by too-small corpses in the ice and snow to see anything alive.

“No. Let me go. I can stop them. I can save them, just-“ he protests, but the hands are too strong and ice water floods his veins, making it impossible to fight back. Iohannes struggles regardless. He will fight to his dying breath if that’s what it takes to save them. He can’t watch them be murdered, not again. He has to do something. He has to help. He has to intervene. He doesn’t care if it screws up the grand plan because the grand plan isn’t worth anything if it leaves children to be murdered with hydrogen cyanide or sewn back-to-back and left to die of gangrene or-

A hand touches his arm. Unlike the others, it doesn’t try to hold him down, though it is certainly strong enough. “It’s alright,” the voice at the other end of the hand says, his words stilted and accent oddly formal, “the children are safe, Icarus. You can sleep now.”

The children aren’t safe. They’ll never be safe. They have to suffer now so that a galaxy can be saved later. The anguish of a million tiny souls calling out for their _sweet, merciful god_ has to be weighed against a billion lives and the safety of a thousand future generations. It’s the only way.

But they’re just children, and before he can say as much the drugs they’ve injected into his system have taken hold and there is nothing he can do but retreat back into nightmares. 


	38. Unexpected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "To the return of old friends and to an unexpected but most welcome new one."
> 
> Veronica Rossi  
> \---
> 
> I liked this for the beginning of "Vir," part 6, but then I didn't.

**20 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

“The sun sets alarmingly early on this planet,” Sam says, looking out over the city skyline to the ocean beyond.

“The solar day is only twenty-one hours and sixteen minutes long.”

“Seriously? God,” she says after a moment’s pause, “that’s going to make it hell to figure out the duty schedules. What are you guys doing about the clocks?”

“The best idea we’ve had so far is to divide the day up into twenty-five hours of fifty-one minutes each and then tack on an extra minute to the final hour of the day. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than Durand’s idiotic excuse for an idea. He wanted to put everyone on a twenty-four hour rotation,” Rodney explains, not too exhausted to give the idea the derision it deserves, “that is, sync our clocks up with the SGC. Noon there would be noon here, regardless of what time of day it actually might be, and so on. His said that with sleeping pills and thick enough curtains, we’d all adjust to the schedule eventually.”

“That’s a bit… wow.”

“Yes, well, his first degree’s in computer science. Daylight means almost nothing to those people.”

Sam turns away from the view, giving him a bright, teasing smile that would have had his stomach doing flip-flops back when they first met. But that was a long time ago and they’re both married now to men they love dearly. Sam even has a son, Jacob Daniel, who’s a year, eighteen months by this point. How the times have changed. “Says the astrophysicist,” she laughs.

“Look who’s talking,” he counters, gesturing out at the beautiful, if premature, sunset. “I don’t see you lining up for one of the labs in the sublevels, where you’ll never see the light of day unless a drone accidentally punches a hole in the ceiling during a firefight.”

“I’m a full-bird colonel now. It means I get the fancy corner offices with the oceanfront views. Besides,” she says somewhat wistfully, “I spent ten years under Cheyenne Mountain. I think I deserve a window or two.”

Rodney’s not entirely sure what the proper response to this is and is rather surprised to find himself saying, “Thank you.”

The question appears to startle Sam as much as it does him. “ _Thank you_?” Thank you for what?”

 _Good question_ , he doesn’t say, somehow managing to come up with, “Thank you for taking this job,” and finding himself genuinely meaning it. “I know it must have been hard, leaving your family behind, even if it did come with a bump in rank.”

There’s something tight about her smile – tight, but open and honest as well, and Rodney thinks he enjoys being her friend far more than he ever enjoyed his ridiculous infatuation with her. “It was a hard choice to make, but it was time to move on. There wasn’t much more I could do at the SGC unless General Landry retired, but even then they’d never have let an O-6 have that command. So it was either this or Area 51, and, to be honest, I wasn’t quite ready to stop going through the Stargate yet. Besides, Jack has clearance, so there’s no reason he and Jake can’t visit.” Sam considers this statement. “We might actually see more of each other this way.”

“Still, thank you. I know we might not seem the most grateful, but I’ll be nice to have some who actually knows what they’re doing in the position.”

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, McKay.”

Pointing a finger at her sharply, “Don’t get used to it. Just because-“ he stops abruptly, bringing his finger to the Device beneath his right ear. “This is McKay.”

Evan’s voice comes in loud and clear over the comm line. “Hey, Pops. I’m with Icarus. We’re still in the infirmary-“

“Obviously.”

Evan continues despite the interruption, “-and you should probably get down here. You’ll probably want to bring Colonel Carter – and Doctor Morris, if you see her.”

“What do we need an anthropologist for?”

“You’ll see.”

Rodney frowns, lowering his hand as the line disconnects.

“It doubles as a radio?”

“It’s also a Wi-Fi hotspot,” he says distractedly. “And Evan wants us in the isolation room.”

“Is John alright?”

“I’ve no idea.”


	39. Win Or Lose Or Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Because it's better to love whether you win or lose or die. It's better to love and I will love you until I die."
> 
> The Airborne Toxic Event "The Graveyard Near The House"  
> \- - -  
> This is vaugely related to the installment I'm working on now, is alluded to in Liberator, and probably messes up my attempt to put the series in chronoligcal order (through links, at least) horribly. (Also, this is 97 days after the First Expedition arrives, way back in S1, shortly before Amici et Amatores.)

**[28 October 2004](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/322464.html) – Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus**

This is the moment he realizes he's in love:

It's late. Late enough that even Iohannes would normally be in bed, despite the fact that he's taken to spending the better part of the late night hours wandering the halls of the city, running his fingers along her water damaged halls and trying to make sense of this new world he's found himself woken into.

He's not supposed to sleep. He'd spent the better part of the afternoon learning to use the Bantos rods with Teyla until a bad block and an overzealous attack had sent him to the infirmary. According to the Terrans, one shouldn't sleep with a concussion and, while Iohannes doesn't quite understand their logic, he'll put up with it to avoid the guilt trip he'll get otherwise.

Rodney's offered to stay up with him, using it as an excuse to introduce him to more Terran culture. Tonight's selection is  _Star Wars_ , something which Rodney claims has been waiting to show him until they could watch the whole series all at once.

He'd liked the first movie well enough – it is nothing spectacular, not compared to the episodes of  _Star Trek_  he's already seen – but  _The Empire Strikes Back_  is captivating. It's only sheer exhaustion that causes him to fall asleep sometime after the attack on the ice planet, head resting against Rodney's shoulder.

When he wakes, his head is propped up on Rodney's thigh, Rodney's fingers absentmindedly carding through his hair.

In the moments before Leia professes her love to Han on the screen, he's able to think,  _I want to spend the rest of my life this way_ , with the sort of certainly only available to the sleep-addled and concussed. It's not until later – much later, after the Empire's fallen and the crowds are cheering – that he realizes the immensity of his realization.

He's in love. Irrevocably. Whole-heartedly. Forever and always. With Doctor Rodney McKay. It doesn't matter that Rodney could never love him back, not in the way Iohannes wants to be loved. It's enough to have him as is, as the best friend he's ever had – as the only thing that makes this strange new existence worth living, - without asking for anything more.

All it all, it's not a bad way to spend the rest of his life.


	40. Blue Putty Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Hold still," my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised the mast with and set the clipper ship free on its blue putty sea. And I would wait for him, recognizing the tension of that moment when the world in the bottle depended, solely, on me.” 
> 
> Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones  
> \- - - Part of "Gubernator, Part II" that I liked but didn't fit. Not much in the way of plot, but... The Latin means "I will remember you."

**2 August, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

_Vindicta_ is a marvel of engineering, seamlessly melding Alteran style with Terran substance: Her design is vaguely cetacean, stretching over twelve decks and twenty-two kilometres to a sharp, sheer stern. The mirror-smooth planes of her hull are uninterrupted save for eight railguns batteries, three hundred drone tubes, and six launch bays each nearly large enough to house _Daedalus_ – minor disturbances when considered from stellar distances.

Inside, her layout follows the fractal geometry that so baffles new arrivals to Atlantis, but each doorway is placarded in the manner of every Terran structure he has ever seen. Elevators replace _vectorae_. Keyboards and switches replace sensible crystal touch controls… And Iohannes loves her. He doesn’t remember constructing her at all, but he loves her unconditionally, in a way he assumes most species reserve only for their children.

“ _Tui meminero_ ,” he promises her, not imagining the happy _hum_ the _linter_ makes as he gives her one last pat before turning around to address the small crowd that has gathered, waiting for an explanation.


	41. Loudest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Quiet people have the loudest minds."
> 
> Stephen Hawking  
> \- - -   
> Yet another way I thought to begin the next chapter of "Gubernator," and then didn't like so much anymore...

**2 August, 2007 – _Vindicta_ , _en route_ to Erecura **

 

“Have you always wanted to be a pilot?” Doctor Porter asks, somehow having managed to maintain her seemingly boundless enthusiasm five hours into the journey.

Iohannes is tempted to ignore her. If he’d had his way, the psychologist would not be part of this mission at all, but Sam had made her presence a condition for borrowing the Expedition’s geologists to check out Erecura, Arimanius’ geologically active seventh moon. As much as he would rather pretend the entire field of psychology does not exist, he and Rodney had agreed that there was no point in investigating a geothermal energy research station without geologists in case the moon itself had something to do with _the_ _puzzle piece_ he’d thinks exists there.

But Iohannes is far from patient at the best of times and five hours into a twelve-hour trip is not _the best of times_ by anyone’s measure. He shares a look of exasperation with Major Teldy – Sam’s other condition, currently seated with her combat boots on the weapons console and reading a Regency romance – before giving in and saying, “I think people who don't want to fly are crazy.”

The grin Porter gives him manages to come across as _innocent_ rather than _exploitive_ , although that’s almost certainly what it is. “I don’t know much about it, but you seem to be very good. Actually, people tell me you’re one of the best they’ve ever seen. I suppose you’d have to be to manage a ship this size. Did it take a lot of training?”

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“Flying comes naturally to _pastores_.”

“And you’ve been a _pastor_ since you were five years old.”

“Someone’s been reading my file,” Iohannes snorts, turning his attention back to the viewscreen. Arimanius is still a small, reddish dot on a black field, too far to be seen even magnified, but even had it been closer it wouldn’t hold his interest for long. See one lifeless Jovian; see them all.

Porter gives him that smile again, all cheekbones and pursed lips, the one that should worry him more than it does. No one would ever call her beautiful, but there’s a certain prettiness about her that cannot be denied, especially when she smiles. Joy lights up her entire face; he can easily see some young man or woman devoting their life to trying to make her laugh for that reason alone.

It’s quite likely he’d like Alison Porter if she’d chosen a different profession. She has the same bright, indefatigable nature Teyla does, albeit lacking the refinement age and experience will bring. Her quiet humour is enough to keep what sessions he’s been unable to avoid from being unbearable, but she’s is still a psychologist. She still asks questions Iohannes would rather not think about, let alone discuss with anyone, and refuses to allow him to leave until he’s answered to her satisfaction.

He tries to avoid as many sessions as he can.

“It’s my responsibility to learn everything I can about my patients,” she says, as if she knows what track his thoughts have taken and cannot help but be amused.

“Nobody can learn anything about a person from a file.”

“Well,” she admits, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards, “it’s far from ideal, I’ll give you that, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Is this the part where you tell me off for dodging our appointments?”

This time, her smile reaches her eyes. “It’s like you can read my mind.”

“Hardly.”

“I had wondered. Colonel Carter had mentioned that telepathy was an ability some of Ascended beings have. Now, I know you’re not Ascended anymore, but you’re still fairly close to it – Doctor Beckett told me that, if you weren’t as close to it as you are, they probably would have lost you on the operating table right after you Descended half-a-dozen times, – so I wondered if you still had any of the abilities. It certainly would explain some things.”

“Had.”

“Had?”

“There are no more Ascended beings. There is no more Ascension.”


	42. Living Is So Dear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.” 
> 
> Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods  
> \- - -   
> This is literally just a 1000 words on Ronon, because of popkin16. For reasons. I tried to turn it into a coherent story and may still do so one day, but... this is what I have.

In the beginning, Grandfather taught, there was nothing – no earth, no moons, no stars. There was only that which some travellers call Night and others Chaos, but which Satedans know to be The Heavenly Ocean, upon which all men must travel and to which all return in time. And so it was for an age.

The Heavenly Ocean contained all things, for it was both light and dark, male and female, fire and water. But the darkness was not content to stay joined with the light and it broke away, splintering into the thousand demons that were the first Wraith. The Wraith roamed across The Heavenly Ocean, sewing death and destruction everywhere they went. And so it was for an age.

Seeing this destruction, some of the light broke away from The Heavenly Oceans and splintered, just as The Wraith had, forming the thousand gods that were the first Ancestors. The Ancestors waged war against The Wraith and their darkness until after a thousand thousand years they had chained all the demons in the deepest, darkest depths of The Heavenly Ocean, where they could cause no more harm. And so it was for an age.

The Ancestors created light to fill the darkness that had tainted The Heavenly Ocean and called them stars, and gathered together the earth and created worlds where they might stand and bask in the light they had made. After a time, they created the first people and placed them on each of the worlds and made for them forests that they might have game and gardens that they might have the bounty of the earth. They taught the first men to hunt and fish and farm, how to weave cloth and stack stones and control fire. To some they even taught the secrets of life and death. Then they returned to The Heavenly Ocean, as all men must do, to revel in their good works and the works of their creations. And so it was for an age.

It is said the last Ancestor to visit Sateda was The Star-Maker, who went up into the Mountains at the edge of the world with his son, who was himself was a Star That Fell From Heaven. For three days and three nights they toiled at the edge of the world. On the dawn of the fourth a second sun let up the sky. The second sun, however, was short lived and when its light was gone, they discovered the mountain that had marked the edge of the world was gone, extending the plains to the sea.

It is said that The Star-Maker had tried to place his son, The Star That Fell From Heaven, back into the sky but that the son refused to leave his father’s side, or that The Star-Maker had failed to lift his son high enough. Either way he was a young star, Grandfather would say, no more than two-and-ten, and far too young to leave his father’s side.

Then Ronon would laugh, being half two-and-ten himself, and say that two-and-ten was a man grown.

Grandfather would laugh and say, “We’ll see,” but they never did, for The Second Childhood claimed Grandfather that summer, and then there were no more stories, for Ronon had to be a man grown already.

* * *

 

The Wraith had not visited Sateda in six generations before Ronon’s father was taken. People had begun to forget the demons – or, more often, call them superstitions left over from the old days, like the _juju_ old men and women still wore on their hair to bring luck and long life. But Grandfather still believed and had given a _juju_ for protection to Mother on her wedding day, as was traditional, and Mother would sometimes wear the amulet as a pendant around her neck.

Grandfather would later say that this _juju_ had protected her, for Mother was visiting her sisters in the mountains on the day the Wraith came rather than in the city with Father, sparing both her life and her son’s.

Ronon was born three months later in those same mountains, called _Ronon_ for the father he would never known and would never know, not until their spirits found each other in The Heavenly Ocean, to which all men return.

* * *

Mother’s sisters were kindly but stern. They were not ones to weep over the loss of so many men and women in that first culling or any of the many others that followed. They were the type to tighten their belts and half their portions in the face of adversity, no matter how many times they’d had to tighten their belts before. They were mountain women, with no time for forest-folk superstition.

Mother wasn’t like that, though. She was soft and quiet and warm, if sad. She never remarried, though she had suitors enough. She would say that Father had been her _basherter_ , her soul mate, and that no one could take his place in her heart. She would get real quiet after that. Sometimes she would be quiet for days on end.

When that happened, Ronon would sometimes sneak into her bedroom and watch the rise and fall of her chest, to make sure she hadn’t followed Father into The Heavenly Ocean.

* * *

 

According to Grandfather, cullings happened when The Wraith escaped the prison The Ancestors created for them in The Heavenly Ocean. It was every man’s duty to fight the demons, as their creators had done in ages past.

According to the scientists that came to the fore in Sateda’s last years, their planet had developed past the arbitrary level of human advancement The Wraith allowed the human populations they culled. When The Wraith came now, it was not to reduce their population but destroy their civilization. They fought for survival itself now.

Not that there were many scientists in the mountains where Ronon was raised. He only came across them once his aunts sent him to school in the city, to learn what the city-folks considered important.


	43. Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've been thinking a lot about The Émigrés lately, mostly because they're becoming a bigger part of AJ as I plan ahead. (The list of whom, with some fancasting, can be found [here](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/280334.html)). Per this 'verse, the program is made public 3.3.2012.
> 
> Add in some rereading of Speranza's _due South_ stuff, which made me think of "Written by the Victors," and, well, here we are.

They didn’t plan to become criminals, but when Major Lorne’s voice came down the line – an untraceable signal beamed straight from _Aurora_ to their unlisted cell phones – telling them to bring only what they could carry, they all made the same decision. They each took what the SGC would miss, what the Confederation would need, and waited in locked bathrooms of busy coffee shops or in shadowy parking structures at busy airports for _Aurora_ to beam them aboard five hours later.

There were twenty-three of them. They could be divided any number of ways – fifteen males, eight females; eleven gene users, twelve non; six Americans, two Japanese, four assorted Europeans, seven from throughout the Commonwealth, and three others – but in the end they were all Lanteans at heart. Pegasus had gotten into their blood. Some of them had ties to Earth. Only two – Doctors McKay and Zelenka – had any obvious reason to return to Atlantis, but all had protested the SGC’s decision to recall the First Expedition to the point of written reprimand, and all answered Major Lorne’s call that December day.

The governments of Earth called it _espionage, kidnapping, treason_.

The Confederation of Pegasus called it _The Haegira_.

 

\-- Excerpt from Rik Bakker’s 2015 [Cundill Prize](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cundill_Prize) winning history of Atlantis, _Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation_ (Picador, trans. 2014).


	44. Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read more about Anna Morris and other emigres' [here](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/280334.html)

The _Émigrés_ were extraordinary people, but even so Anna Morris’ story is typical of their decision to defect.

Born and raised in Yellowknife, deep in the heart of the Canadian Northwest Territories, Anna Morris was the daughter of a miner and a schoolteacher. Glenn and Leon, her brothers, were twins, six years her senior and her superiors only in athletic achievement. Friends remember her as a quiet, unassuming, self-contained child who never really fit in to town life, with a stubborn streak a mile long.

Morris graduated from Sir John Franklin High School in 1990 at the age of – barely – sixteen, and would spend the next decade of her life at McGill University in Montreal. In 1994 she would take a double major in Anthropology and Classical Studies, earning a doctorate in each over the next six years. Her work attracted the attention of SG-1 team member Doctor Daniel Jackson, who personally recruited her to the anthropology team SG-11, where she would remain for nearly five years.

Following The Battle of Atlantis, Morris was recruited to the First Atlantis Expedition, replacing Doctor Helena Lazos. Over the next eighteen months, she became attached to Atlantis, to the point of writing ten letters of official protest regarding the recall of the First Expedition. As an excerpt from her letter to then-Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, dated 3 November, 2006, shows:

> You don’t understand what kind of mistake you’re making with the recall. Forget _balance of interests_ or _casualty estimates_ or whatever other bull the idiots you call advisors are feeding you, you don’t get it. The Wraith **eat people** and we’re responsible for waking them up. We have an ethical and moral responsibility to help clean up the mess we made, and if you don’t fucking understand that you don’t deserve to be sitting in that chair. If you don’t have the balls to make that call, at least allow those of us who do to remain behind.

Morris’ decision to return to Atlantis was solidified before The Second Exodus had even begun.

Because of the threatening nature of her letters of protest, Morris was denied permission to return to her old SG team, instead taking up a teaching position at the University of Toronto that would allow her to continue her doctoral research into the comparative origin myths of the First Nations. She held this position for a month before being contacted by _Aurora_ for exfiltration.

When she left, quiet, unassuming, Morris took with her approximately $50,000 Canadian dollars ($43,000 US) in university slush funds – the only thing of value a professor in her position could get her hands on.

 

\-- Excerpt from Rik Bakker’s 2015 Cundill Prize winning history of Atlantis, _Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation_ (Picador, trans. 2014).


	45. The Lost City: Lessons From The Atlantis Expeditions I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm on a roll. More book excerpts from the as yet unwritten, upon Declassification, AJ future.

A large part of the blame for The Haegira rests with Elizabeth Weir. From the beginning, she allowed the city’s lone Ancient survivor Iohannes Ianideus Licinus Pastor [ _also John Sheppard, later Iohannes Ianiedus Icarus Imperator; Iohannes Invictus_ ] entirely too much freedom. After his deliberate murder of the First Expedition’s senior military officer, Colonel Marshall Sumner, he took control of the military arm of the Expedition, exercising a level of autonomy unthinkable for any Tau’ri military commander. At least two of his actions during the first two years of the Expedition can be considered attempted mutiny; he was never properly disciplined for either.

Although Doctor Weir died tragically following a head injury on Asuras at the start of the Asuran-Tau’ri-Wraith War, three months before the recovery of the _Tria_ crew, Weir’s actions during her tenure as Expedition Head set a dangerous precedent for what Iohannes believed the Terrans would and would not accept. Her decision early on to allow Iohannes complete liberty directly led to his decision to send his adopted son, Air Force defector Major Evan Lorne [ _also Davidus Iohanideus Argathelianus Pastor, later Helianus Ascendeus_ ] to Earth.

 

\-- Excerpt from Vivian Chambers’ history of Atlantis, _The Lost City: Lessons From The Atlantis Expeditions_ (Picador, 2013).

 

* * *

 

> Blaming Elizabeth Weir for the Haegira is like blaming the sun for rising. The situation on Atlantis required that she trust Sheppard, who was not only a native of the city but the most capable military officer she had on hand. The First Expedition would not have lasted six months without him – and, if by some miracle it had, it would have fallen to the Genii during The Storm of 2005 without him.
> 
>  

\-- Excerpt from Rik Bakker’s review of _The Lost City_ for _London Times’ Book Review_ (trans. 6 October 2013).

 

* * *

 

> While I agree that Doctor Weir should have ordered Sheppard shot the moment she laid eyes on him, I have the benefit of almost a decade of hindsight. Undoubtedly Earth would have saved itself a lot of suffering and McKay, if he’s half the scientist the folks in Stockholm claim, would have learned the Ancient’s secrets on his own. But recent years – and, most notably, the Pegasus Accords – have redeemed Sheppard in my eyes. The First Atlantis Expedition may have been the only one had Sheppard been killed early on and Atlantis would have remained firmly in Tau’ri control, but the universe would be lesser for his loss.

 

\-- Exceprt from Major General Franklin Curtis Webb’s (USAF) Op Ed piece for _The New York Times_. (22 December 2013).


	46. Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. I think I'm done. Sorry for all this.

“We didn’t set out to start a revolution,” Evan Lorne said at the start of his official after-action interview in November 2009 as part of the nonaggression pact chartered by then-Expedition Head Richard Woolsey, “but I think it was inevitable – not because of the ones who left, but because of the ones who stayed.”

Lorne continues:

> The amount of hate between the two groups was unbelievable. And I mean unbelievable. I was there and I still don’t quite believe some of the things Icarus said about the _Tria_ crew or how they treated him. There was a lot of ancient Ancient history going on there that I didn’t learn about until much later.
> 
> The best way I can describe it is to imagine the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War. Think of all the hate both sides had for each other, all of the atrocities that were committed by both sides, and the fact that some people were willing to blow themselves and a whole bunch of innocent people up for the chance of hurting their enemy just a little. How take all that and boil it down to Icarus and me on one side and Captain Helia and her hundred-and-two Guardsmen on the other. I’ll let you decide which side is which in this scenario. […] Frankly, things would have been a lot bloodier if the Expedition had been allowed to stay.

Some of that ancient history can be found in the city’s historical records. The unreasonable animosity Helia held for Sheppard’s father, Janus, seems to mutated into an unreasoned loathing for his son made moderately justifiable by a few childhood slights and the unfortunate outcome of the Battle of Tirianus.

But the best explanation for the Alteran Massacre and, in turn, the Haegira, can be found in one of Daniel Jackson’s mission journals:

> It all comes back to Ascension. I’ve no doubt that Iohannes wants what best for Pegasus, but I think he’s also starting to believe his own propaganda.
> 
> We’ve estimated there are maybe a billion people in Pegasus; most of them worship the Ancestors, as they call the Ancients, to some degree or another, and the Ori have shown that there can be a real, physical energy transfer from a human being to the object of his worship. And John’s the only Ascended being in Pegasus…
> 
> I like John. He’s a good man. If the people of Pegasus have to worship somebody, they could have chosen much worse. But he’s still just a man.

 

\-- Excerpt from Rik Bakker’s 2015 Cundill Prize winning history of Atlantis, _Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation_ (Picador, trans. 2014).

 


	47. Systematic Understanding: Reflections on Three Decades of Lantean-Tau’ri Relations I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did it again. Sorry.

The problem, in the end, wasn’t Sheppard. Sheppard may be an alien, but he’s still military.

No, the problem was everyone else they sent. McKay, Zelenka, Kununsagi, Green – they were all hyper-intelligent, under-socialized, self-motivated go-getters who never really belonged anywhere until they went to Atlantis. Sure, Sheppard _sent_ Lorne to Earth to bring home the folks who’d come to call themselves _The Émigrés_ , but he never would have done that if there hadn’t been twenty-three people who _wanted_ someone to take them back to what they considered their rightful homeworld.

So blame Sheppard all you like, the real fault for the Haegira and everything that follows lies with the SGC itself. They sent the people. They kept them there long after contact had been re-established. And they – tragically, hastily, forcibly – removed them when Captain Helia claimed control of the city. It was practically revolution _prix fixe_.

 

\--Excerpt from the fourth book of Lt Col Ángel Perez’s histories about the Stargate Program, _Systematic Understanding: Reflections on Three Decades of Lantean-Tau’ri Relations_ (Picador, 2035)

 

* * *

 

Ángel Perez is the author of several histories about the Stargate Program, including the 2028 Pulitzer Prize winning _Standing Orders: The Tau’ri-Goa’uld War_ and _Hallowed: The Untold History of The Ori War._ He is also the 2040 recipient of the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.


	48. Three Reviews

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. I know.

> Call a spade a spade. McKay and Sheppard were in love and the SGC had separated them by three million light years. The Haegria was nothing more than the space-faring version of Romeo climbing into Juliet’s window.

 

\--Excerpt from Helen James’ review of _Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation_ for _London Times’ Book Review_ (15 June, 2014).

* * *

 

> Love may conquer all, but only in the movies. Sheppard spent his whole life fighting the Wraith. He knows what it is to be a solider. As much as he may have loved McKay, he still made the tactical decision to allow him and the rest of the First Expedition to return to Earth – and, later, made the tactical decision to retrieve the Émigrés, but _only_ after it became the tactically sound action.
> 
>  

\--Excerpt from Major General Franklin Curtis Webb’s (USAF) Op Ed response to Helen James’ review of _Natural Revolutionaries: From Expedition to Confederation_ for _London Times’ Book Review_ (22 June, 2014).

 

* * *

 

> The mistake General Webb makes is his assumption that because Sheppard had spent his whole life fighting the Wraith, he was a solider at heart. On the contrary, _because_ he’d spent his entire life at war, he held intense value for his chosen family. Let’s not forget that later McKay would stop an intergalactic war in its tracks _because he told Sheppard they couldn’t be together if he went through with it_. We’re talking about nothing less than grand, fated, storybook love here. To say that either of them acted for anything else is nothing short of criminally absurd.
> 
>  

\--Excerpt from Helen James’ response to Major General Franklin Curtis Webb’s (USAF) Op Ed for _London Times’ Book Review_ (29 June, 2014).


	49. Beyond My Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a quick drabble. This was supposed to be a cute, falling in love with your best friend drabble. This was supposed to be fluff. Instead it became chock-full of content and depth and whatnot. I'm sorry. I tried.  
> 1) [Brandon Nelson](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/355125.html) and [Zachary Richards](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/355021.html) are [Emigres](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/280334.html). I've finally gotten up to putting up bios. 2) This takes place shortly after John does his Lazarus impression but before the events of "Gubernator." The Third Expedition has just moved in. 3) They will figure out the coffee one day. 4) I had no specific Russian movie in mind. Nor am I familiar with them at all. 5) This ended up being a l I'm now off to read popkin16's mourning lanterns fic.

**26 July, 2007 – Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

 

And then came the day when Brandon announced he’d found the mushroom that would cure cancer.

This isn’t so unusual in and of itself. Brandon does something like this about twice a month. He’s excitable, that’s all, and after a day or two the excitement will wear off and the reality of his discovery will sink in and he’ll mope a little bit, but that’s all part of his process. It just needs some getting used to.

Zak has been sharing a lab with Brandon since the beginning, mostly since Doctor McKay had only allotted the botany department two labs and neither of them had wanted to share with Parish, even if it would have made more sense for Zak to pair up with him, both being more on the ecology side of things than the straight up growing of plants. Now they share out of habit, though the lab they share these days is really Greenhouse Complex One, made up about half of the sublevels on South Pier’s more westerly side. The greenhouses all operate on artificial light – the better to grow things at the bottom of an ocean – and have disconcertingly low ceilings, but they have room to sprawl.

On this day, they’re in one of their larger workspaces not far from the rice paddies. Katie Brown has stopped by to work on their joint attempt to modify a coffee bush to grow in the vertically challenged conditions Atlantis has on offer, which is good, but has brought John Parish with her, which is less good. Katie’s a sweetheart and Parish is nice enough, but he’s a _talker_ and Zak only has so much tolerance for _Homo sapiens_ on any given day. He got into botany for a reason.

He and Katie are over at the seedling trays when Brandon comes in. Parish is sitting on a dirt-covered table nearby, in the middle of telling the Marine that followed _him_ in a convoluted tale about why he’s still behind on his mission reports from before Sheppard booted the Second Expedition out of the city. They all turn when Brandon announces, “I’ve found the mushroom that will cure cancer.”

Katie beams at him. “That’s wonderful,” she says, wiping the dirt of her hands. There are still streaks across her face and a few stray leaves in her dark hair, but Katie doesn’t notice those – she never does. She just walks over to Brandon, gives him a maternal hug, and asks, “Is it the polypore you found on MT3-120?” as she drags him over to Zak and the coffee seedlings.

“It’s not a true polypore, but yes,” Brandon says, practically bouncing on his heels. It shouldn’t be as endearing as it is.

“You think it will cure all cancers or just one or two specific ones?” Zak grins, throwing an arm around Brandon’s shoulders. They’re always doing that with Brandon, their whole department – pulling him into one-armed hugs, ruffling his hair; fixing his collars. They’re the most laid back of all the departments on Atlantis, excepting Doctor Baker’s one-man oceanography department, and Brandon is something like their mascot. “Better question: who are you trying to blind? I thought we agreed that you’d have a talk with Teyla’s seamstress friend.”

Katie swats his arm lightly. “You lay off him, Zak. I think he looks dashing.”

“He looks like a court jester,” Zak says, with is only a little bit of an exaggeration. Brandon, wonderful, lovable, _naïve_ child that he is, pretty much lets the seamstress do whatever she wants with his clothes. They all do, really. But where that had gotten the rest of them stately reds and blues, Brandon had somehow ended up with patchwork and motley.

“First off,” Brandon says in mock offense,  “her name is Malie Islien. And, second of all, I like it.” As if to illustrate this last, he holds his arms out wide and executes a wobbly twirl – followed by an even wobblier bow.

Katie claps dutifully. “Very handsome,” she agrees, continuing, “Now tell me about this mushroom of yours.”

At least, that’s what Zak thinks she means to say. He can’t make out all of the words over the very loud _snort_ the Marine still talking to Parish makes in the middle of it.

They turn to stare.

The Marine, however, seems to think this is indication to _continue_ not _get the fuck out of here_. “You would all _have_ to be faggots to have pulled a stunt like you did, wouldn’t it? It’s not enough for you to be traitors, you’re all fairies and lesbos too.”

Zak wonders exactly what kind of idiot this guy has to be to say something like that, alone, deep in the heart of Lantean territory. Sure, the Marines that make up the Third Expedition military contingent aren’t always the brightest crayons in the box, but the SGC usually makes some attempt to screen for open-mindedness. That and the new military leader, Major Teldy, doesn’t encourage stupidity like Colonel Telford used to.

He’s about to say just that so when Parish, quietly, in a tone of voice that brokers no argument, says, “You should apologize.”

“You know, _Sir_ , I don’t think I will.” He turns and that’s when Zak recognizes him. This isn’t just some idiot Marine: this is the gunnery sergeant he and Brandon ran into after Sheppard’s coronation – the one who’d claimed that Sheppard would go Ori before the end. “The Major says to hold my tongue, but I’m tired of sitting back and watching you guys fuck this galaxy all to hell. You say you’re doing this for them – that you have a moral requirement to save them from the Wraith, but what have you done since your little _coup d’état_? You’ve thrown some nukes at some Replicators and nearly got the whole city destroyed in the process. Sure, there are people dying out there, but you’re all on Atlantis, sitting pretty, dressing up like Norman conquers and complaining about not being able to grow your own coffee. Doesn’t look to me like you’re doing jack shit for the common man.

“So you wanna look down on me for not being as _liberal_ or _open-minded_ about where you stick your dicks, you go right ahead, but don’t act like you’re so morally superior. I may be a bastard, but at least I know I’m a bastard.”

The workroom is quiet for a long minute, with only the clatter of the air recyclers breaking the silence. Then Parish, in that same low, dangerous voice that Zak never suspected he had, says, “I think you should leave now.”

“You know,” says the gunny, already heading for the door, “I think you’re right.” Once he gets there, he pauses and turns heel – but only for a moment. Only long enough to ask, “You four were all with the SGC for years before you left. I was on SG-9 from the beginning. We had to have walked the same hallways for years before ever coming here. Do any of you brain trusts even know my name? Any of our names?” There’s a long pause. I thought not.”

The workroom is quiet for a while after that.

* * *

 

It’s late when Zak calls it a day. Katie and Parish left hours ago, but Brandon’s still there, running tests on his cancer-curing mushroom. If he notices Zak’s getting ready to leave – or that Zak’s still in the room at all, - he doesn’t show it.

He sighs and walks over to Brandon’s corner, shutting off lights along the way. No one in the department has the ATA gene, so they mostly rely on compact fluorescents and get someone with the gene to adjust the settings on the greenhouses once a week or so. Zak usually tries to get Doctor Morris, their lone anthropologist, to do it, mostly since he kept trying to set up Anna and Brandon, but that was before she got together with Doctor Green – proving that he had guessed her type correctly if not Brandon’s. Since then it’s mostly been Doctor Baker, who really is a great guy but needs to learn to keep a shirt on. One day he’s going to run out of the board shorts that seem to be the only thing he brought with him from Earth; then they’ll all be in trouble.

Zak taps him on the shoulder, waiting until he’s pulled out his earbuds before saying, “Brandon, c’mon. It’s getting late. Let’s go see what’s left in the mess. It’s Miko’s week to cook, so you know I’ll be something good.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Now why don’t I believe that?”

“I’m not-“ He stops mid sentence, takes off his glasses, and hangs his head. “Do you think he was right?”

“Was who right?” he asks, though he knows Brandon can only mean one person.

“The gunny. Do you think he was right? I mean I love Atlantis. I love being here. I love the people I get to work with. I never felt like I fit in anywhere before we came here. Even at the SGC everything didn’t _click_ like it does here. But I also came back because I wanted to help people.”

“I remember,” Zak says quietly.

Brandon had never meant to return. Oh, he’d wanted to, but he’d not written letters of protest like the rest of them had – not the antagonistic, almost threatening letters to anyone with stars and knowledge of the Stargate Program like the rest of the Émigrés. He’d just been in Zak’s lab when Lorne’s call came because they were each the only people the other had known at Duke and Brandon wasn’t much older than some of the grad students he was supposed to be teaching. Brandon had been there and Zak couldn’t _not_ tell him what was going on, even if it might have jeopardized the entire operation.

 _I want to help people_ , Brandon had said, and then looked around at the lab full of GM crops they were supposed to be testing for Big Agro and said, _Let’s take the seeds. Folks back home could use them_.

So they’d emptied their backpacks and filled them with as much vitamin A rice and glyphosate-ready soybean and pest-resistant cotton as they could carry, then stuffed their pockets with sweet peppers and potato eyes and hid out at the local movie theatre until time for pickup. If Lorne had been surprised that Brandon tagged along, he hadn’t shown it. None of them had.

“Hey, don’t worry about what that guy said, alright? He’s just a tool. He’s just trying to get a rise out of just because he knows Sheppard or McKay or anyone with any power would kick him back to Earth if he tried it with them.”

“I know. But that doesn’t mean he’s not right.”

“What about your cancer-curing mushroom? That’s helping people.”

“I don’t think it’ll really cure cancer,” Brandon admits sadly, slipping his glasses back on. “It might treat leukaemia some, but I don’t think it’ll actually reverse it.”

“Baby steps,” Zak says reassuringly. “Now come one. Let’s go see what we can steal from the mess and go watch one of your weird-ass Russian movies.”

“You hate my _weird-ass_ Russian movies,” Brandon reminds, grinning up at him as he pushes his chair back.

“I don’t _hate_ them. I merely prefer my own interpretations of them.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You gotta admit they’re more interesting if you mute them and make up your own script.”

“No. No I don’t.”

“Well, you have until I conk out to prove me otherwise.”

* * *

 

“Hey, hang on a minute,” Zak says, pointing at the laptop with unsteady, frustrated motions as the credits roll. “I thought those two,” he waves more broadly this time, “were supposed to be in love.”

“They are,” Brandon says solemnly, closing the laptop and placing it on the nightstand. They’re in Brandon’s quarters, which are the closest thing to a dump as it’s possible to find in Atlantis. Which is to say they’re cramped, filled with far too many awkwardly placed columns, and mostly face one of the less attractive towers. The bed is squeezed between four of those columns and is narrow as fuck, but it’s the only place to sit so there they have it. (The columns _are_ perfectly placed for a blanket fort though, not that they’ve tried it or anything.)

“But they don’t get together.”

“People don’t always get together.”

“I know,” Zack continues petulantly (it’s possible he’s had too much to drink tonight), “but this is a _movie_. They spent all that time _almost_ getting together and in the end the blonde one-“

“Fedot.”

“-Fedot just _gets on a plane_. It’s _stupid_.”

“Yeah, well, he realized that Matvei would never say anything, even if he felt the same way. It takes a lot to be gay in Russia. Just ask Doctor Chziov.”

“That’s stupid too. If you love somebody, tell them. It’s not that hard.”

“It is if they keep trying to set you up with _Anna Morris_.”

“I’m sorry-“ Zak begins before the meaning of Brandon’s words catch up with him, changing to a high-pitched, “ _What_?”

“Well you weren’t being very subtle about it. It was kind of embarrassing, really.”

Zak waves him off. “No, not that. The other thing.”

“Oh, that. I like you. I’ve liked you for a long time. I never said anything because you kept trying to push _Anna Morris_ at me, but then you said it was _easy_ to tell someone you love them, I decided to give it a shot.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be a _dare_. And why do you keep saying _Anna Morris_ like that. What’s wrong with Anna Morris?”

“Nothing, other than that _she’s a woman_.”

“I can see now how that could be a problem.”

“Oh, can you? You’re an asshole, you know,” Brandon says oddly fondly.

It’s kind of stupid, but he’s known Brandon for over seven years, ever since Brandon came to work for the SGC. They’ve shared lab space for the last three. Hell, Zak went to _Brandon’s parents_ for the Thanksgiving they were stuck on Earth during the Second Exodus, and he’s never once suspected Brandon might like him as anything more than a friend.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“You’re still an asshole.”

“I know, I know. Hey,” he says, popping up and looking down at Brandon, who’s mostly turned away from him on the stupidly narrow Ancient bed, “does this mean that every time you’ve called me _asshole_ you’ve been saying _I love you_?”

Brandon throws a pillow at him. He holds the other over his face in a way that suggests he’s about to smother himself. “This isn’t _The Princess Bride_ , asshole. Can we stop talking about this now?”

Zak tugs ineffectually at the pillow. “No, Brandon, we can’t. Not until we decide what we’re going to do about this little admission of yours. Are we going to forget that it ever happened – which is entirely possible if I have any more moonshine – or are we actually going to _do_ something about it? ‘Cause if we’re going to do dinner and a movie again, I’d like to know about it _before_ the dinner part next time.”

The pillow twitches hopefully. “Next time?”

“Well, yeah. And don’t think I’m not making fun of you for the crapiest first date ever either.”

“Zak,” the pillow says patiently, “you like girls.”

“I like you. Tomorrow good for you?”

This pillow flies past him.

Zak picks both off the ground and sets them carefully on the bed. “Is that a yes?”

“Yes, _that’s a yes_ , you asshole.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meeting you was fate.  
> Becoming your friend was a choice.  
> But falling in love with you was beyond my control.


	50. Rising: The Dawn of an Empire I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I have now written a drabble about oysters. Mostly because of [this](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/355447.html).

The Expedition’s food situation quickly became, if not critical, than at least a critical concern. As the Athosian Jinto Sirelle would note:

> We discovered the oysters early on. I remember being at a conference between my father, Lady Teyla, Lady Elizabeth, and Lord Iohannes about three weeks after our arrival in The City of the Ancestors. I remember them saying that while the Earth-folk had brought along supplies, they would not have enough to feed us all until crops could be grown on the mainland. Our village had been destroyed. We had nothing to contribute and little to trade. Even with rationing, it appeared likely that many would starve.
> 
> Then Lord Iohannes stood up and asked us to come with him. We borrowed some baskets from Ruiha and took the stairs all the way down to the city’s lowest level. Then we walked down halls that grew more narrow as we passed and smelled more deeply of mould and brackish water. Finally we arrived a doorway.
> 
> Despite his great power, Lord Iohannes could not open the door. He and my father both had to take sides to pry the doors apart. When they did, I could see a great, dark room that extended for half a kilometre in any direction. Inside was a great, rough grey mass not unlike the rock formations I had seen on some worlds. I did not know how rocks could feed us as said as much to Lord Iohannes.
> 
> Lord Iohannes laughed and tousled my hair – I think sometimes that may have been the first time he voluntarily touched another being since waking in the _cathedra_. Then he took the KA-BAR from his belt and pried a piece of the rock away from the rest. He then stuck the tip of his blade into the rock and _twisted_ , splitting it in two – it was no rock! It was an oyster! The whole room was a filled with hundreds upon thousands of oysters!
> 
> “Can you eat these?” he said and Lady Elizabeth laughed and Lady Teyla said, “These would feed many villages several times over,” and my father said, “We could never repay your generosity, Ancestor.” Lord Iohannes grew quiet at that – he was often quiet in those days; I never saw him smile unless he was with Doctor McKay, not for many months anyway – before saying, “You don’t need to repay me. We’ll all die unless we can get in more supplies. I’m just doing what I can. It’s what any decent person would do.”
> 
> We all thanked him and then began the hard work of filling our baskets. It took us almost an hour and, when we’d finished, we’d barely cleared the doorway. Lady Teyla was wrong: those oysters could feed many worlds several times over.

Doctor John Parish, a botanist with the First Expedition who would later become one of its Émigrés, picks up the narrative.

> Our botany department was all of three people that first year. There was Brandon Nelson, a mycologist; Zachary Richards, an ecologist; and myself, a morphologist. After the party the second night, Doctor Weir came up to me and said, “We were eighty-eight people with supplies for six months [with rationing]. We now have two hundred guests to feed until they get back on their feet. We need to find a way to extend our food supply.”
> 
> Sheppard pointed us in the direction of the city’s greenhouses and McKay loaned us Miko [Doctor Kununsagi], who could both read Ancient and who’d experience with civil engineering in London, and McMurdo and trusted us to solve the problem.
> 
> After about three weeks, all we had to show for ourselves were some potato seedlings, potatoes being about the only crop we’d brought with us that could grow in the city’s greenhouses – low ceilings. Even that would have only been enough for about half a baked potato each four months later.
> 
> We’d planned to rely on trade for most of our food – which we’d start about six months after we arrived, once we established allies in Pegasus. We had medical supplies that would buy a solar system in Pegasus even today. We’d even brought along some olive seedlings, because empires were built in the boughs of olive trees and we had no idea how long we’d be on our own.
> 
> So we’re sitting in the mess hall – it was the only communal area we had at the time, – staring at our tablets, trying to figure out how to turn a hundred potato seedlings into something that could feed a colony _tomorrow_ when Jinto comes running in, staggering under the weight of a basket he’s got balanced on his head. He rushes over to Maile and her sisters, who volunteered to cook for all of us – using a battalion of pots set up over a fire pit they’d built in the middle of the mess hall and fed with _ten thousand year old dead plant limbs,_ I might add.
> 
> Teyla, Halling, Doctor Weir, Sheppard – they’d all followed Jinto in with baskets of their own, but none of us noticed. All our attention was on Jinto and the basket he was presenting to Maile. “Look, Cousin!” he announced. “Oysters! Lord Iohannes has given us oysters! Enough to feed our village for a lifetime!”
> 
> The whole room cheered. We feasted on oyster stew that night.

As Doctor Parish noted, it would take months to set up agriculture on the mainland. Homesteads would have to be built. Farmland would have to be eked out from forest. More importantly, they would have to trade for seed crops.

While the Athosian presence expedited the cultivation of trade partners, the Expedition was still limited by what they could trade. Few planets would believe in the efficacy of their medicines right away and their weapons – despite Sheppard’s best attempts – were not up for trade.

They were able to supplement their diet with game animals from the mainland and what plant matter that they were able to forage in the planet’s winter season, but for the most part it was, “Oysters!” Doctor Zelenka would later remember.

> It would be an MRE for breakfast than oysters, oysters, oysters. Some days you wouldn’t even get the MRE. It would just be oysters, all day, every day. Baked oysters, fried oysters, scalloped oysters. Oyster stew and oyster soup and roast oyster with oyster sauce. Sometimes there would be raw oysters, which were something of a treat due to sheer novelty, but the botanists didn’t like letting us do that too often because the oysters _were_ part of the water filtration system and nobody really knew what had passed through in the last ten thousand years. But mostly it was just oysters, cooked on hot stones at first then in the ovens once we finally got the kitchens working. Four months later we were finally able to get some wheat and some tava beans. I think we all were teary-eyed when that shipment came.

Today few Lanteans eat oysters anymore. They're mostly a trade good sent back to the Milky Way at a net profit of $55,000 a year - Atlantis' sole agricultural export, and the only one not dependent upon Ancient technology. But the former military commander sees to it that the population has oyster stew once a year, less in remembrance of lean times than need to keep the oyster population down. "We usually make sure we do it on his birthday, the bastard," McKay says fondly before inviting the reader to remember that Ancients were culturally vegetarians and that Sheppard himself returned to this practice after his Ascension.

 

\--Excerpt from Lt Col Ángel Perez’s history of Atlantis _Rising: The Dawn of an Empire_ (Picador, 2025).


	51. Rising: The Dawn of an Empire II

Even more so than the Haegira, the citizens of Atlantis used the city’s relocation to Nova Loegria as a chance to reinvent themselves – or, perhaps, to better lay the foundations for their future. “It all started with Noah,” Adi Ahavah, the Israeli ex-patriot whose work integrating Ancient propulsion systems with Tau’ri technology would revolutionize how mankind travelled, said in a declassification interview.

> Nova Loegria was nothing like Lantea. Lantea was an extremely Earth-like planet – a little bit smaller, a little bit slower on its axis, a little bit closer to its sun – but Nova Loegria was something else entirely. Oh, it was just as habitable, but we’re talking a superearth, one with a quick rotation and a core about ten percent ice. We eventually figured the ocean floor was _four hundred fifty_ kilometres below the surface. It was a true waterworld.
> 
> Noah [Doctor Baker, a marine biologist] loved it. He spent about a month mapping the ocean before realizing that the only islands of any size on the planet were unsuitable for farming. So what does he do but go to the _linter_ hangar, grab all the scrap metal he can get his hands on, and build what you could probably call a fishing trawler. Didn’t tell anyone else about it either. He just built it and launched it and the first any of us knew about it was when it showed up on the sensors in the Gate Room as a rouge object on the water. By the end of a week he had collected enough that the Genii were willing to trade us half a crop of tava beans for it all.
> 
> Amanda [Doctor Cole, a neurologist] was furious about it when she found out too. They got into a huge fight about it right in the middle of the mess hall as we were hauling it all to the kitchens. She called him things _I’d_ never heard before. And then, when she’d finally run out of steam, Noah just _proposed_ , like it was the most common thing in the universe, and that was that really.

It was as if a switch flipped. The Émigrés who, like the First Expedition they had once been a part of, had largely been hyper-intelligent, under-socialized, _solitary_ individuals who engaged only causal relationships with each other, suddenly began pairing off. Amanda Cole and Noah Baker’s engagement was quickly followed by Katie Brown and John Parish’s, which was followed in turn by Miko Kununsagi and Paul-Henri Durand’s and two others.

“For a while there was a wedding a month,” General Cater recalls with some amusement. “Folks from the SGC were going back and forth all the time then. It helped calm things down, I think. These people, despite all the politics going on, were still all our friends. Only instead of blenders on their wedding registries there were things like the latest scientific journals and coffee beans. In retrospect, it was all a little bizarre.”

Despite Cole and Baker’s early engagement, the Émigrés’ first child was born to Adi Ahavah and Irfam Abaza on 5 February, 2008 after a high-risk pregnancy. This child, Issur Ahavah-Abaza, would be the first child born in Atlantis since Nicolaa de Luera Pastor in 8227 BCE, and though his parents would never marry, Ahavah and Abaza remain in one of the SGC’s notorious dedicated and un-formalized relationships to this day.

Atlantis was becoming a colony.

\--Excerpt from Lt Col Ángel Perez’s history of _Atlantis Rising: The Dawn of an Empire_ (Picador, 2025).


	52. Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” 
> 
> Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie  
> \---  
> What I was originally going to begin "Fater" with...

**3 November, 2007 - Vancouver, Terra, Avalon**

It’s hard to believe how much life can change in a year.

Or maybe it’s not hard at all. The universe itself hadn’t changed, only his perception of it had.

Kaleb had scarcely believed his wife when she said that a US Air Force officer had come to their door, asking if she couldn’t just pop over to the Pegasus galaxy for a couple weeks to work on some project with her brother in _the Lost City of Atlantis_ of all places. But when Meredith had appeared in their living room in a burst of white light, talking about how he was too busy and important and sleep deprived and _important_ come halfway across the universe to play tour guide for anyone, even his sister, Kaleb had known it to be true.

The Americans had been hiding the existence of space travel for the better part of a decade. After that, finding out that the popular science fiction series _Wormhole X-treme_ was based heavily off this top-secret program was almost insignificant.

It had become rather more significant after the same colonel who’d approached Jeanne about her math proof approached _him_ about writing for the show. They – _they_ being Top Secret Productions, the un-ironically named front company responsible for managing the thin line between fact and franchise – needed someone to turn mission files into a comprehensible narrative for the oblivious screenwriters to use to create episode scripts. It was all very convoluted and American, but Kaleb had accepted, mostly because he wanted to know what his brother-in-law had been doing all these years.

It had been an eye-opening experience.

Armed only with his predecessor’s notes and a film studies minor, Kaleb managed to sketch out a comprehensive storyline for the next three seasons of _Wormhole X-treme_ and push through most of the development of the spin-off, _Pegasus X-treme_ , that’s set to start filming late next year. He’d intended it just to be a side job, something to do in his free time, but he ended up reducing his course load at the university this semester and has become a frequent face at the studio on filming days.

Jeannie calls it his midlife crisis. And maybe it is, but for the first time in their marriage they’re financially secure. All their debt is paid off and they’ve got a good sized college fund set aside for Madison and have finally succeeded in trying for another baby. They don’t want to know if it’s a boy or a girl, but Jeannie keeps joking about naming it after a WXT character – Nicolas or Alexandria or even Andrew, after the show-version of her brother.

He’s just finishing up the last of the story notes – which all too often turn into short stories of their own, to be fleshed out by a ghost writer and turned, embarrassingly, into pulp fiction – for the season six finale when he hears a noise in the kitchen.

 


	53. Children

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The soul is healed by being with children.” 
> 
> Fyodor Dostoyevsky  
> \---  
> Part of "Frater" that I removed for pacing reasons....

**3 November, 2007 - Stargate Command, Terra, Avalon**

Iohannes ignores the offer to take a seat. He ignores the-

_“I’m so sorry to see you back here under such circumstances.”_

-and the-

_“Can I get either of you something to drink? Some coffee, perhaps?”_

-and the rest of the false concern and hallow platitudes in favour of planting himself directly in front of Landry’s desk and demanding, “What’s the situation?” the moment he can get two words into the conversation.

“You may want to sit down, son,” the General sighs, doing as much himself.

Iohannes has never liked General Landry. He is a politician first and an officer second and it shows in everything he does, from his overly obsequious way of addressing those who outrank him to his distain for the opinions of those under his command to the way he’d encouraged Telford in his attempts to formulate an intergalactic war. He can’t help but bristle at something as condescending as _son_ coming from a man like him. “I am _Praetor_ and _Pastor_ of Atlantis,” he says lightly, adding, “and I was once _Imperator_ of the Pegasus Confederation. You don’t have to like me, General, but you do have to respect my titles. Now, tell me everything you know about Rodney’s sister being taken or else I’ll go to Vancouver and ask the detectives themselves.”

“This isn’t Atlantis, _Colonel_ ,” Landry rebuts, overly stressing the title they would have stripped from him if they could have explained it to the Terran press. “You aren’t in charge here.”

“Neither are you, apparently, if my _sister_ can be kidnapped from underneath your undoubtedly expensive surveillance,” Rodney cuts in sourly, little more than a ball of restless energy perched on the edge of a creaking chair. His need to find his sister radiates outwards, nervously setting Iohannes’ foot to taping and the muscle in Landry’s cheek to twitching.

“Unfortunately, my powers don’t extend past the Canadian border. The Canadian government is of the belief that your actions, Doctor McKay, in disabling the Oracle satellites, while misguided, were not illegal. As such, they refused to allow us to have eyes on your sister.”

“And since when is the SGC is the business of caring about other nation’s laws?”

“Since the IOA began taking their mandate of _international oversight_ seriously – but,” Landry continues with some bitterness, “my orders are to bring you up to speed on the situation, so let’s not start another intergalactic war until _after_ we get Mrs Miller back, hmm?”

Rodney gestures impatiently for him to continue.

Landry’s cheek twitches violently. “This morning,” he says, attempting to collect himself, “at approximately zero hundred hours Pacific Standard Time, an unknown number of assailants broke into your sister’s home. When the police arrived, they discovered your sister missing and your bother-in-law in critical condition. I regret to inform you,” he continues with apparently genuine sympathy, “that he died from his injuries en route to the hospital.”

“What about Madison?” Rodney asks, speaking over Iohannes’ attempt to do the same. “Our niece? Did the kidnappers-?”

“Your niece is – well, I hesitate to say fine. She was the one who contacted emergency services this morning upon finding her father bleeding out. The Vancouver Police have her, for the moment. Mister Woolsey is attempting to secure her release into your custody-“

“We need to go,” Iohannes says quickly, seeing the look Rodney sends him. “Now”

Before Landry can protest, Agent Barrett arrives with their changes of clothing, and that’s all the excuse either of them really needs.

 


	54. Finishing Chapters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.” 
> 
> Paulo Coelho, The Zahir  
> \---  
> Part of what I was going to stick into "Magister, "Part 2" before it grew so long and cumbersome I had to take something out.

**1 September, 2007 - Atlantis, Nova Loegria, Pegasus**

“I’ve been offered a teaching position at the Air Force Academy,” Daniel tells her after he’s finished filling her in on the latest news from Earth and a strange, heavy sort of silence had fallen between them. They’ve been living in and out of each other’s pockets for the better part of ten years now, so it hadn’t been awkward, but Sam could feel the weight of his words building in the quiet.

 _Everything is changing_ , she’d thought waiting for him to speak. _It will never be as it was,_ and maybe it’s her fault for leaving, or maybe it’s just time, but some part of here wants to go on believing that she can leave at any moment and find the SGC just as she left it, with her team waiting for her, however untrue it may be.

“Oh?”

“Not for this year,” he adds quickly, gaining momentum as he goes on. “I’d start next fall. They’re putting together a _Stargate Studies_ program, though they’re not going to call it that. They just want people ready for the SGC once the Program is declassified – military archaeologists and anthropologists, some linguists with a working knowledge of Latin and Ancient Egyptian. They want me for department chair.”

Sam smiles at him brightly. “Congratulations.”

“The Naval Academy has made me the same offer. Money’s the same, but I’d be closer to D.C., so I could still help with the Declassification.” He pauses, as if leery of her response. “I think I’m going to take it.”

“That’s great, Daniel. Just promise me you’ll find time to come through the Gate and visit every now and then.”

“You think you’ll still be here a year from now?” he asks in surprise.

“Who else is there? Telford almost started a war here. Their botany department _still_ thinks we’re out to start a war.”

“Botany? Really?”

“They’re easy targets for the ones that are still angry about everything that happened. I’ve tried to put a stop to it, but you can’t just order people to change the way they think. If it gets worse, I’ll send them back to Earth, but there are so few people willing to come this far when we’re technically only guests already…”

“I know. I’m sorry. Really,” Daniel says, meaning every word. “I just…Last time I was in New York, Jake was asking about you, and I hate how you have to choose between something you’re absolutely brilliant at and your family. You know, that’s probably the best thing to come out of this whole mess,” Daniel waves his hand in a manner that suggests not only Atlantis, but everything that’s happened since they found the _Tria_ , “all the families.”

“So you heard then?”

“About Doctor Ahavah? Yeah. Plus I got like four wedding invitations in my inbox when we dialled in. Hey, maybe you can convince Jack to retire here. I’m sure there will be plenty of kids for Jake to play with in a couple of months.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Yeah,” Daniel says, returning her faint smile, “maybe not.

 

 


	55. Fuss or Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.” 
> 
> Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love  
> \- - -  
> Another part that was to have fit into "Magister, Part 2." I've no idea why I write Woolsey so sad, but there it is. And, yes, I'm clearing out my hard drive. How did you notice?

**1 September, 2007 - Midway, The Void**

Alone in his temporary quarters aboard Midway, Richard dreams of the ocean. He dreams of the house on the water he and his ex-wife had rented in Montauk the summer before he asked Jane to marry him. He remembers the all-encompassing sound of the waves and the smell of salt on the air and the way everything had been so simple then – just the two of them, without anyone or anything else to get in the way.

He’d been a newly minted _juris doctor_ , fresh from the New York State bar exam, with an associate position waiting for him to take up in the fall between the few final classes that would earn him his MBA. The world had been his oyster, yet to be sullied by ever-increasing questions of when he’d make partner, when he’d run for office, when he’d open his own practice, when he’d leave government work, when he’d be home; when he could have his bags packed and be out of her life for good.

He should have known then by the way she’d crinkled her nose at the first sight of that small waterfront rental that she’d never be happy being a litigator’s wife. It wasn’t enough for her to marry a lawyer: Jane wanted to marry the _best_ lawyer and have the _best_ house so she could throw the _best_ parties so she could raise the _most_ money to put him in the _highest_ office, to repeat the cycle all over again. She needed a ladder to climb, a race to run, and it would take Richard almost twenty-five years to realize it. All he’d wanted to do was practice law.

He knows he’s only thinking of that summer now because of the phone call he’d received just before leaving – the one that said she is getting remarried, that her new husband is the man who’d won district attorney the year she’d told him to run; that she can’t believe she’d stuck it out with Richard so long in the first place. They’ve been divorced for three years, separated for five, but no one could ever make him feel quite as small as Jane still can.

He can’t stay in bed after that.

He dresses quickly, heading for the small common area that serves as both dining hall and rec area. Even empty it feels cramped and crowded – too many chairs, not enough space – but it’s infinitely better than being left alone with his thoughts.

It’s impossible to tell how long he sits there before Doctor Jackson comes in, still blinking sleep out of his eyes, and collapses into the seat across from him with a rueful, “Can’t sleep?”

“No,” Richard admits, reluctantly lifting his gaze from his long stale cup of coffee to see the dark smudges beneath Jackson’s eyes.

“Me neither. Most people can’t stand being posted here more than a month or so – there’s too much nothingness outside, even if there aren’t windows to see it. Drives some people crazy. The real trick is finding people who can manage long term without developing psychotic tendencies.”

“That’s… unsettling. Have you tried poaching personnel from McMurdo?”

“We’ve tried everything. Problem with that is there’s not much crossover between the kind of folks we need conducting research at McMurdo and the support staff we need keeping an eye on things here. Well, except for Susannah – Doctor Lowell. She was researching the Ancient Plague in Antarctica before we brought her here to oversee quarantine procedures.”

“Speaking of quarantine-?”

Jackson grins, seeming to read his mind. “Ours has about three more hours left on the clock. We won’t be able to dial-in early, but we might get Susannah to go ahead and clear us if we head down to the infirmary now.”

 


	56. Disease of Loneliness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” 
> 
> Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage  
> \- - -  
> Set anytime between "Vir" and "Frater." A general Alison Porter drabble that I was going to use for something and never quite fit.

Even at twenty-eight years old, Alison Porter feels too young. It’s not that she feels particularly childish or incapable – for all practical purposes, she’s been living on her own since she was fifteen years old, - but that she does not feel wise enough or experienced enough or _old_ enough to be making the kind of decisions that have been entrusted to her.

Not that she’d felt any different _before_ being drafted into the Third Atlantis Expedition, and back then she’d only been counselling traumatized soldiers at Landstuhl. She’s a Saskatoon kid who went straight from her parents’ doorstep to the ivory towers of Stanford and Yale. What does she know about war?

She’s a psychologist, but empathy only goes so far. She can diagnose and treat and occasionally help people overcome their illnesses, but when a twenty-year-old PFC comes to her, telling her how he and his buddy were caught in an ambush and how he feels guilty because he only lost his legs and his buddy lost his life, what is she supposed to do? When an officer makes a call that costs him half his squad, she can say all the things she’s been taught to say and do all the things she’s been taught to do, but what the hell does any of that mean when the only thing she knows of death is a car crash on an ice-covered road or a seat at the dinner table that has never been filled.

Yet somehow she’d been good at it, good enough that she’d somehow caught the eye of an SGC recruiter. She’d signed up to be their psychologist, working under the illustrious Kate Heightmeyer, who’d written the book on relationship counselling before joining the First Expedition.

Only now Kate is dead and Aly’s supposed to treat her killer, unintentional as his crime may have been.

What does she know about aliens? Until two months ago, she hadn’t even known aliens existed, let alone that her government was actually in contact with them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note, the previous drabble collection, "A Paradox of War," was 38,210 words long. Before this posting, this collection was 37,364 words. Once I go over 38k, I will close this collection and start another one, for symmetry's sake.


	57. Destined To Become

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” 
> 
> Ralph Waldo Emerson  
> \- - -  
> A general Lorne drabble, set during/between "Magister" and "Fater."

Once upon a time, before he’d been named _imperator_ of the Pegasus galaxy, before he’d been dropped from the rolls of the Air Force, before Evan had even known that Sheppard was an alien, Icarus had said to him, “We belong to something much greater than ourselves.”

Naively, Evan had imagined he meant the Stargate Program, and how could he not? The Stargate Program had done more for humanity in the last ten years than humans had managed on their own in the last century. Granted, most of those advances benefited the humans whose ancestors had left Earth long before there was much Tau’ri science to speak of, but there is no shame in that. Life is life, whatever planet it originates on, even if Evan had been in it less for the people than the places back then.

But now he can’t help but wonder what exactly his adoptive father had meant by those words. He can’t have meant anything particularly deep or profound – he’d briefly Ascended during what the historians were already calling the Battle of Atlantis, but even the pundits agree three minutes of Ascension hardly counts as such – but maybe he had. Maybe he’d caught a glimpse of his future, which folded back upon itself to become his past and his future again, and had somehow known the end he sought was worth the misery it took to get there.

Evan has to believe that. He has to trust that there is some greater plan at work than testing the limits of human – or Ancient – endurance time and time again. He has to trust that this is not Icarus’ destiny, to set into motion something wonderful and then lose himself in living memories.

Or maybe there isn’t. He knows there’s no god, no master plan – or, if there ever was, it went out the window when Icarus Descended. He’d not expected to survive, so he’d never made any provisions for his future – or, maybe, madness is the only possible future for a fallen god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: This story pushes this drabble collection over 38k words, meaning it's reached the same length as the one that came before, "The Paradox of War." For this reason, I am closing this drabble collection and shall make another one when I have another drabble to post. 
> 
> THIS IS NOT THE END.


End file.
